it would be perfectly fine for you to take an Electra Print tranney and tear it down, reverse engineer it, copy it and have it reproduced, and then advertise it as a copy of an Electra Print just so long as the design is not patented?

And that Jack forfeits any and all proprietary interests in his own design once he sells a product?

Like I've said.... ethically, to me this would be ripping off Jack. He put the work into the design... and it is his.

Especially when there are public domain designs available that you could use to learn with... and then as your knowledge base grew perhaps even improve the design of.

If you reverse engineer Jack's product and make mistakes or don't do the job well... and all the while... your telling people that yours is a faithful replica (teardown) of Jack's transformer... who gets hurt?

For the risk that Jack faces (poor product image) what woud a Jack have to benefit from your pirating of his design?

let's just get back to the basics of the ethics of all of this...

and, again, maybee someday if you actually design and build something of value... perhaps then your views on piracy might change a bit.

msl