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Miles F
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Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:55 pm

Slow Dog wrote:
As for the Rev, well, it's a genuine invention no-one had done before. It's only twenty years. 'Tis nothing, really. Seems fair to me. And despite all the carping, how many places can we point to demonstrate how to make money in the Kite business?


Yupp you gotta hand it to them, re-releasing the same thing they put out 20 years ago (give or take a colour change or two) qualifies for the Marketing Genius and Profound Laziness Awards symultaneously :P

Incidentally has anyone heard the rumour that plans for the Rev "Centuary" One Hundred Years Of Quadline excellence may have been leaked :shock: :lol:
A NOHD will be published for the DS in due course, till then wear sunnies.
 
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kitejan
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Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:49 pm

I supose if they got the basic idea right 20 years ago they wouldn't need to radically move away from that design. I guess that people are still buying Revolutions must be some indication that people want to buy them?

More "high class" construction and modern bells and whistles would be nice of course - along with more pleasing sail designs :)

Jan
 
Stan Doff
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Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:23 am

Zippy8 wrote:
In how many fields of endeavour is the first go the be-all-and-end-all ? I don't recall many riders cresting the L'Alpe d'Huez on a Penny Farthing, I prefer MP3s over wax cylinders and even RyanAir would chafe at the idea of using Wright Flyers.
Mike.

Some would say that the sort of bikes you see on L'Alpe d'Huez represent a different artificial restriction on progress.It has been asserted that the Sport of cycling's exclusion of all but that kind of bicycle has prevented the wider exposure and acceptance of more efficient recumbent and faired designs.

The predecessors of Ryanair might have had to use Wright aircraft if Wilbur and Orville had got their way.One of the features that made the Wright Flyers such a step forward was their ability to control movement in the rolling plane,by a system of wing-warping.The Wright brothers claimed (unsuccessfully) patent rights for the ailerons that subsequently were used in other people's designs,on the strength of their innovation.

Your point about patent restrictions delaying progress was well illustrated last night,in an episode of "Industrial Relevations". It was explained how the partnership of Boulton and Watt held the patents on steam engines effectively stopping anybody else doing developmental work,whilst they turned out the same designs,like a sort of Georgian Rev.Once their patents expired others were free to invent high-pressure engines with a better power to weight ratio and Trevithick was able to give the world the first steam locomotive.

p.s. Some might suggest that Britain never got over the delay in the arrival of the first railway loco's,so the trains have been running late ever since.
 
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Fungus
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Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:39 am

you aint seen me right, i'm in hiding right, I don't like lawyers right :shock:

my whimpsy, just thinking in a careless way ( mum warned me to think before i speak, didn't say anything about typing) whether protecting patents was good for business. :?

It obviously is and I'm glad because :D I LOVE MY REVS :D , congratulations to the Hadzicki team, I will be at BRISTOL ( limbs willing) to celebrate :D 20 YEARS OF REV'S :D

fungus
w H ind c H ecks H ar 4 w H imps
 
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hezz
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Tue Aug 05, 2008 1:23 pm

Hm, not sure about the spurious claims of "re-releasing the same thing they put out 20 years ago". OK, the basic shape is what we all know (and love) a Rev to be, but you can't say the original Rev I is the same animal as the current Rev 1.5 Baressi, for example.

There has been innovation and improvement in the last 20 years, albeit not huge.. but then would you expect it to be? Perhaps tweaking bridle designs, developing new spars, construction methods etc.

Probably one of the major developments for Revolution was bringing out the Rev 1.5. It cost less, had better flight characteristics, and now look how many individuals and teams all around the world now use them! If the Rev I had remained the only type of Rev available, I doubt they would be as popular.

I flew my 1998 Rev I a few weekends ago, and noticed that the fabric they used - and yes, it was more like fabric than ripstop! - was heavy, stretchy, and 'ballooned' more than the lovely crinkly, light stuff on my Baressi. OK it has had a few dozen more hours in the air ;-) but it is not the same as a 2008 Rev.

I think the brothers had every right to patent their truly original design, but let's face it, hundreds of people have made their own 'custom Revs' since and they don't all get sued and bankrupted. Unless someone was blatantly mass-producing and selling knock-offs, of course. They deserve to be come down on like a ton of bricks! (it's no better than making knock-off handbags, or memory sticks.. and undermining the quality and reputation of the legitimate manufacturer).

Hezz
 
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jr
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Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:28 pm

 
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mobius
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Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:42 pm

hezz wrote:
Hm, not sure about the spurious claims of "re-releasing the same thing they put out 20 years ago". OK, the basic shape is what we all know (and love) a Rev to be, but you can't say the original Rev I is the same animal as the current Rev 1.5 Baressi, for example.

There has been innovation and improvement in the last 20 years, albeit not huge.. but then would you expect it to be? Perhaps tweaking bridle designs, developing new spars, construction methods etc.


Ah yes.. but all the innovation and improvement is all done under the banner of Revolution is it not? Therefore to certain degree it is bound to be limited. If you have a monopoly.. is there any business need to re-invent the wheel?

Contrast this with the 2-line World.. the shape still very much looks the same as it did 15 years ago, but look at all the wierd and wacky ideas that have been tried on 2-liners.. from the MEFM with its auto adjusting bridle.. right up to today with the Deepspace with its roll bars. All different designers trying different things.

When I first started flying.. doing a two-point landing was considered a trick! I had no idea that in years to come we'd all be seeing the tricks we see today... all of which made possible by development.

This 'arguement' sounds similar to that of the Open source software vs non-open source one.
Dave Morley
 
beach
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:10 am

Hello this is Ben from Revolution for you that do not know me and I wanted to touch on the things I have controled or been a part of, on the knock off deal eash one I have gotten was just plain junk and most of them advertise is with some wording such as rev like kite, thats where I get upset. I personally have spent untold hours getting things right at the factory and working hard to get all the world to be a part of this and to do the very best by people and when others produce trash and then use our company name with it to help sell it yeah I get upset. Then when you get a knock off that has the name Revolution on it, well tell me how should I feel.........Also being that I'm here I think protecting what you have shows you care about what ever this may be and we have protected what we have and we are still here 20 years later, do I agree with everything this
company has done probably not, but what I do is respect what they have done that why I'm a part of all of this...... I have read many of the posts on this forum but have not wanted to make waves here or upset any one but I've watched these brother remorgage there homes to try to push thru and keep this company afloat and it's only been the last 3 years or so out of the last ten where they to are seeing the fruit of there labor...As for changes well things are changing and I'm doing my very best for ALL of kite flying thru the only tool I have Revolution Kites.... You can beat me down in this forum if you like but I will tell you as a man that I care and the company I work for cares and I will do my very best to cure problems and make changes as best I can and if we as a company make a few bucks in the process even better.....Ben
 
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sftonkin
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:22 am

beach wrote:
on the knock off deal eash one I have gotten was just plain junk and most of them advertise is with some wording such as rev like kite, thats where I get upset. I personally have spent untold hours getting things right at the factory and working hard to get all the world to be a part of this and to do the very best by people and when others produce trash and then use our company name with it to help sell it yeah I get upset. Then when you get a knock off that has the name Revolution on it, well tell me how should I feel.........


You appear to have been reading a different thread to the one here. Nobody here has advocated putting your company's name on knock-offs. This thread is essentially about the attempted, or threatened, use of patent law to stifle innovation. Would you like to comment on that?

As to the bit in brown, ISTM that this is symptomatic of a stereotypically septic view of how "all the world" should behave; has it occurred to you that "all the world" does not necessarily share the septic view?
 
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Slow Dog
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:07 pm

It seems to me Beach is talking about Trademark rather than Patent issues.

Trademark law as it stands in US and Europe says if Revolution don't protest that people claiming their kites are "Rev-Like" are infringing their trademark they lose it, and then anyone can make "Revolution" or "Rev-like" kites of any quality or design. They don't have the option of letting it be, unlike with patents. The law compels them to tell the world the "Rev-Like" means kites made by Revolution and naught else.

I actually think they've already lost that battle, given the kiting world in general often refers to four-line kites as "revs" regardless who made them, much in the way I "hoover" my home with a Dyson.

P.S.
This forum has in general been a friendlier place than ... elsewhere. I'd like to hope it would continue to be so.
 
beach
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:09 pm

Stephen I can only comment on things which I have a part in, and yes
Slow Dog you are correct to the best of my understanding but so all know
that's not why I'm here, why I felt the need to post on this forum so
we can perhaps all work together to better kitting.....Ben
 
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Zippy8
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:03 pm

beach wrote:
Hello this is Ben from Revolution

Hello Ben :-)

on the knock off deal each one I have gotten was just plain junk and most of them advertise is with some wording such as rev like kite, thats where I get upset.

No-one should have any problem with you chasing down people who just Xerox™ the Rev. commercially. That's simply wrong and not to be tolerated. Hopefully someone at Rev. checks out eBay at least daily and puts a stop to the crap masquerading as their product. I would have thought this guy would be a prime target, as would Current Chasing Kites that was linked to in the GWTW thread that (partially) kicked this thread off.

But that really isn't the crux of the matter we're babbling on about here.

I'll speak just for myself here: I can't be too impressed with how Revolution (the company) has behaved, even whilst recognising their legal right to do so, with regard to how they have historically seemed to utilise their patent on kite technology. I can fully understand how they don't want knock-offs and I can even extend this as far as pretty-damn-close designs (like the Powell Double Diamond) but... (you knew there was a "but", right ?) I think the overall effect has been to stifle and stagnate quadline kites IN GENERAL to the detriment of kiters. I'm a kiter, not a businessman in the world of kites. And I do think that this has also lead to a certain acceptance that it's somehow "OK" to make your own copies of Revs.

Now it may be that these actions were necessary, I just don't know, but I am seeing this purely from a selfish aspect and I want new and interesting kites. And a constant stream of them too, please. Dualline kites, with no patent restrictions, have moved on. It reads in the Hadzicki patent application:- conventional prior art kites do not sufficiently challenge the kite flyer's skill and imagination. Well that may have been the case once but there is more challenge in a present day duallie than there is in a Rev.

The "Rev." design has not largely altered in 20 years. I realise that you've made detail changes and employed new materials but it's been development not innovation. Fair comment ? There is the Speed Series but it's still pretty much the same fundamental flat-sail-with-a-cross-spar-and-uprights format. There are other ways to do this.

I know that quadliners are a conservative bunch :wave: but is there really a future in simply finessing further and further the same design ? Revolution has at their disposal pretty much every quadline display team and competitor flying their product (more or less....) and yet there seems little desire to innovate again, an acceptance that this is how it is, wait another two years for a new sail pattern.

I have read many of the posts on this forum but have not wanted to make waves here or upset any one

Hopefully Andy won't mind me inviting you to make waves and upset people here. :wink: If we've got something wrong, put us right. We can probably handle the shock.

Mike.
 
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jr
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:12 pm

Ok, I'll make this one a little easier ;) :

http://www.first-to-fly.com/Adventure%20Images/Kite/Climbing%20kite.jpg

Four-line control with handles, flat sails, straight leading edges, directional control by wing-warping - sound familiar? And this was an 1899 design. Given this precedent, I'm slightly bemused by what is actually covered by the Rev patent that is completely original.
 
Stan Doff
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:39 pm

jr wrote:


That's better-I completely missed the point previously-sorry-though being distracted by the picture gallery of all the Wright designs did not help :lol:

jr wrote:
Four-line control with handles, flat sails, straight leading edges, directional control by wing-warping - sound familiar? And this was an 1899 design. Given this precedent, I'm slightly bemused by what is actually covered by the Rev patent that is completely original.


Does it have to be original?
One version of events told on "QI" is that an Italian invented the telephone but had no money to patent it,so Alexander Graham Bell (boo...hiss) stole the idea and patented it in his own name.
Perhaps,anyway,it is a little late for the Wright estate to sue for plagiarism. :lol:

It does raise the issue,though,about just what constitutes invention and who should control what intellectual property.
(Please see S.Tonkin's comments on genomes further up the page)

Where will it all end.Next,an American politician will claim to have invented the internet :shock:
 
beach
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:49 pm

Hey to heck with all that lets just fly........Silly huh a kite flier who just
wants to fly........Okay guys it's nice, I've had a terrible day and I'm going
out and fly my Bseries, my Benson deep space, and put up a few single lines
to duck and dodge, and if I'm not politically correct to heck with that to
cause the only things that works is the wind and my kites and I don't care
who's brand is on them..... I sure wish you all could come with me cause
one thing for sure we would have fun......Ben
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