talkmagic.co.uk

Ummmmm. Great discussion but I think some are slightly changing what I originally meant. Let’s start again with a hypothetical situation.

Let’s say that YOU bought for £20.00 a dealer item using – say – 10 dominos and three of these were secretly marked but the marks were so small that you know with your eyesight you could never do the effect. At the next magic club bring & buy sale you sell the item, totally unused at – say - £10.00. That was that.

Later you think about the effect and it gives you an idea. You create something slightly similar with – say – balls of wool some of which had a knot on the wool so that you could identify them by touch and not sight. You have no intention of selling this but just using it for yourself.

Now, were YOU unethical to sell the original dealer item that you could not use? Would YOU have been unethical to offer it for sale on this site? After all you got the germ of the idea from another item. You see there are so many ways of looking at it.

mark has actualy bought up the slightly grey area of intelectual copyright.

as said before, to patent 99% of tricks is impossible, as this relies on a specific thing being used to do a specific action that is not already in the public domain. This is why nearly all tricks have no patent because they are a) unpaintentable, b) almost impossible to have defendable patents written for them in a court environment

In terms of copyright, the instructions that are written must not be copied in any part, but if your good at english.......

So what that realy leaves us with as magicians is intelectual copyright.

If we take a coin matrix routine or rope routine or even a card routine learn it and then tell our freinds how it is done, then to me that is getting the routine (intelectualy thought out by the originator) for free. I could do all the rope tricks on the fibre optics routine before I got the DVD, but I would never have blended them as well as Mr Saunders. I paid for his experience.

Was PD as stated in mandrakes message robbing Mr Breese of future £80 bundles of joy, or did he have permision to teach the routine to others?

apologies for the spelling

connor o'connor wrote:Was PD as stated in mandrakes message robbing Mr Breese of future £80 bundles of joy, or did he have permision to teach the routine to others?

He was demonstrating how a basic effect can be turned into something far bigger and far more entertaining with a bit of thought and ingenuity. He also stressed that the basic effect must be purchased from the supplier before doing any tweaking.

Buying an effect and selling it on if it's not useable is understandable. Remembering the priciple and applying it to other props in the future is also understandable but, IMHO, becoming borderline unless some form of credit given to and/or understanding is reached with the original effect's creator. I'd still say it was down to personal ethics as there are so many variables which can be brought into play.

mandrake wrote

Buying an effect and selling it on if it's not useable is understandable. Remembering the priciple and applying it to other props in the future is also understandable but, IMHO, becoming borderline unless some form of credit given to and/or understanding is reached with the original effect's creator. I'd still say it was down to personal ethics as there are so many variables which can be brought into play.

agree absolutely

one of the fiirst magicians I saw made a point of thanking his next or last miracle (in full or in part) to the great mr x or the little known mr y . Which not only gave him humility but also made us all think that he had an encylopedic knowlage of all things magical, just like a real Wizard.

I was thinknig copyright not patent.......

It turns out that you can only patent a physical invention, so you can patent a gimmick if you can prove no prior art. You hold automatic copyright on the description of a method of using it, and you can trademark both the name of the method and of the gimmick.

So:

Patent protects: gimmick
Copyright protects: description of method
Trademark protects: names

Well, I started this thread and it's been an interesting discussion that, perhaps, has run its course. I must remember to credit the originator of an effect so when I'm working the Nit Pickers Ball and doing my version of Blank Notes to Bank Note, I will tell the punters I got the original version free from Supreme Magic but that we all know it's Pat Page who should get the credit. They will be impressed I'm sure!

Meanwhile I will think of another thread to start soon that will again be a little controversial . . . . Watch this space as they say. Mark

Obviously you don't need to tell your audience that your piece of magic is a variation of an existing effect, that would be ridiculous - it's when you come to market it that there's an issue.

Can't you see the big KEY I'm using to wind you up? My odd sense of humour will become apparent over time! I'll just keep taking the pills.

Yeah, I did wonder, but you never can tell.