Copyrighting a caliber?

J

Jedi Oomodo

New member
The other day, I was musing (a bad habit I picked up from being largely ignored by my peers while in school) and I wondered if anyone had to pay With and Smession(sic) any kind of licensing fees or royalties to design, market, and sell a firearm chambered for .40S&W. Is it possible to copyright a caliber?
Similarly, does Federal, or Cor-Bon, or anyone else, for that matter, have to pay any such fees to W&S(sic again) to manufacture .40 ammunition? Or, is caliber considered to be a sort of "public domain" property? If the answer is yes (it is copyright-able [hey, I made a word! :cool:]), I will never again buy any gun or ammo in cal .40, as I don't want my hardly-earned money(yup, sic) to go to a turncoat gun company.

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I am not a lawyer and do not know the ins and outs of the current situation on this subject, but in the past it has certainly been possible to keep as cartridge "proprietory", just for the use of the originator. However, this has always been suicidal for the maker of the gun and the ammunition, for availablity has alsways been a key concern the buyers.
You can also get into all kinds of legal headaches in naming a cartridge. In "Any Shot You Want", Col. Art Alphin tells of how his plan to name his gigantic new 30 cal. cartridge in honor of Robert Petersen, former head honcho of Petersen Publishing, as the .300 Petersen was dashed by numerous threats by unrelated people named Petersen to sue him for royalties if he proceeded. He named it the .300 Pegasus instead, noting "if the lawyers can find a winged horse, I'll stick a pen in his hoof and have him sign a release".
 
You clearly missed the discussion threads on this very issue. Due to popular demand due do a very unpopular action by the caliber's former namesake (pointedly not mentioned here), the cartridge is now officially known (to more politically discerning firearms enthusiasts everywhere) as ".40 Liberty!"

Glocks have always just said ".40".
 
Jedi, a copyright generally refers to intellectual property such as writings, illustrations or photographs. The .40 W&S does not fall under copyright law, except perhaps where the "W&S" designation is used.
Whether W&S has any agreements with regard to that, I don't know.

The cartridge itself would fall under patent law, although I don't believe that dimensions alone would give the .40 W&S any distinction.
If a company produced a monitor that was the exact dimensions of the one you're using now, but had different components inside, could that be an infraction of your monitor manufacturers patent? I wouldn't think so. Besides, W&S doesn't make the ammo, so what's to stop another company from making .40 W&S
dimensioned cartridges?

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be, nor in today's lawyer-driven society would I even want to be. Just my .02, and apologies to the lawyers on this board who have to tolerate their left-leaning scum-sucking brethren.

Dick
 
the legal protection for an inventor is the patent. it is for unique devices or discoveries. as far as i know there is no patient on the .40 S&W either for ammo or chamber reamers. several rifle cartridges are considered propriatery (spelling?) in nature and no legitimate company will make reamers or rifles in that chambering without permission. i.e. Laserroni, Weatherby ect.

most developers of wildcat cartridges are so proud of thier creations that they are glad to see folks wanting to load and shoot thier stuff. i think it would be really hard to prove that you had come up with a truely unique cartridge as almost everything has been tried it just resurfaces from time to time.

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Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the outcome of the vote.
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