40 replies to this topic

[tiger99]

I never knew that Jack Knight had gone. How very sad. I was planning something that might have needed their services eventually.

 

Does anyone know what happened to the business? Was any part of it acquired by someone else?

[nicklouse]

I never knew that Jack Knight had gone. How very sad. I was planning something that might have needed their services eventually.

 

Does anyone know what happened to the business? Was any part of it acquired by someone else?

issues with who owned the rights to parts stopped any production. is what i heard.

[tiger99]

That is very annoying, because it means that it was one of the most useless species, "Intellectual Property" lawyers, who brought a once fine business to an end. There is no legal definition of "Intellectual Property" but every time you buy a smartphone, tablet or almost any other electronic device, and many other things too, you are paying a premium to cover the legal costs of doing business where parasites like Apple will sue you just for using a rectangle with rounded corners, or something equally trivial. That is what the alleged "Intellectual Property" lawyers do. Nothing creative, or helpful, in the long term, to the world or the companies who employ them. Just a major drain on the economy, counter-productive and an utter waste.

[Dusky]

Its not that black.
Look at the story about the guy who invented intermittent wipers. Ford stole the Idea.
Thats why intellectual property should be valued.

[Spider]

Its not that black.
Look at the story about the guy who invented intermittent wipers. Ford stole the Idea.
Thats why intellectual property should be valued.

 

Quite.

 

I had to pull up a client for just this the other week, thinking they could help themselves to my IP, especially when the whole IP issue was discussed at some length and clarified in follow up correspondence only a few months prior.

[StraightCut]

Yes, I did see that, I also have a copy of the same brochure for the 6speed ratios that were available in the dog box... 5th would be great for sprints with the low 4.3 diff ratio and the 1.04 drop gear set that I already have, the 6th would be nice for road touring, anyway if I am lucky enough to find one, it would make my Mini unique and that more special, well in my eyes anyway.

Thank you for your comments, like I said earlier, probably nothing available, I know it will cost, but super keen to find one.

[Northernpower]

Yes, I did see that, I also have a copy of the same brochure for the 6speed ratios that were available in the dog box... 5th would be great for sprints with the low 4.3 diff ratio and the 1.04 drop gear set that I already have, the 6th would be nice for road touring, anyway if I am lucky enough to find one, it would make my Mini unique and that more special, well in my eyes anyway.

Thank you for your comments, like I said earlier, probably nothing available, I know it will cost, but super keen to find one.

There was a guy on Piston Heads who put a 6 speed VFR set into a casing (albeit with modifications) and he did a fairly detailed description of it. It's taken me a while to find it https://www.pistonhe...7&t=1634061&i=0  but unfortunately Photobucket has blocked the pictures. 

[Udo]

 

Yes, I did see that, I also have a copy of the same brochure for the 6speed ratios that were available in the dog box... 5th would be great for sprints with the low 4.3 diff ratio and the 1.04 drop gear set that I already have, the 6th would be nice for road touring, anyway if I am lucky enough to find one, it would make my Mini unique and that more special, well in my eyes anyway.

Thank you for your comments, like I said earlier, probably nothing available, I know it will cost, but super keen to find one.

There was a guy on Piston Heads who put a 6 speed VFR set into a casing (albeit with modifications) and he did a fairly detailed description of it. It's taken me a while to find it https://www.pistonhe...7&t=1634061&i=0  but unfortunately Photobucket has blocked the pictures. 

 

This is a guy over on turbominis

 

I do know of a JKD 6 speed box that is sat unused in somebodies garage in Lincoln however the chap will never get round actually using it but wont sell it either 

[Spider]

 

Yes, I did see that, I also have a copy of the same brochure for the 6speed ratios that were available in the dog box... 5th would be great for sprints with the low 4.3 diff ratio and the 1.04 drop gear set that I already have, the 6th would be nice for road touring, anyway if I am lucky enough to find one, it would make my Mini unique and that more special, well in my eyes anyway.

Thank you for your comments, like I said earlier, probably nothing available, I know it will cost, but super keen to find one.

There was a guy on Piston Heads who put a 6 speed VFR set into a casing (albeit with modifications) and he did a fairly detailed description of it. It's taken me a while to find it https://www.pistonhe...7&t=1634061&i=0  but unfortunately Photobucket has blocked the pictures. 

 

 

There was a guy here who did the same - might be the same fella?  Matty I think ????

 

I 'doff my hat to these guys who do this work, including a good friend of mine, Dave Rosenthal, who probably did one of the first such conversions, however, the ratios are just about useless for a car, even a track car.

 

Dave's Box

 

Edited by Moke Spider, 15 September 2017 - 07:36 PM.

[Northernpower]

 

Yes, I did see that, I also have a copy of the same brochure for the 6speed ratios that were available in the dog box... 5th would be great for sprints with the low 4.3 diff ratio and the 1.04 drop gear set that I already have, the 6th would be nice for road touring, anyway if I am lucky enough to find one, it would make my Mini unique and that more special, well in my eyes anyway.

Thank you for your comments, like I said earlier, probably nothing available, I know it will cost, but super keen to find one.

There was a guy on Piston Heads who put a 6 speed VFR set into a casing (albeit with modifications) and he did a fairly detailed description of it. It's taken me a while to find it https://www.pistonhe...7&t=1634061&i=0  but unfortunately Photobucket has blocked the pictures. 
 

 
There was a guy here who did the same - might be the same fella?  Matty I think ????
 
I 'doff my hat to these guys who do this work, including a good friend of mine, Dave Rosenthal, who probably did one of the first such conversions, however, the ratios are just about useless for a car, even a track car.
 
Dave's Box
 

Yes you're right it's Matty

[tiger99]

Intellectual property is a complex issue, not that there is legally such a thing, but there are patents, copyrights and registered designs, and mostly these are effective. It all went wrong when a court in the USA decided that software could be covered by patents (it must not, as it causes ONLY problems) in addition to copyright. Nothing else has dual protection, nor, correctly, does software on its won in most countries including the UK. But we all pay what is effectively a tax on smartphones due to Microsoft asserting alleged patent rights, without disclosing which, that can't be applied in the UK anyway. However Samsung etc cave in and pay umpteen dollars per phone, whether sold in the USA or not. That may be Microsoft's main income these days (it certainly isn't phones with less than 1% market share, for very good reasons!), and is why I am very much against a certain breed of intellectual property lawyers. So was a UK court, one was disbarred from practising law, went to jail, and was fined millions if I recall correctly, for involvement in bogus music copyright violations, at the behest of the US MPAA or RIAA.

 

No part of any Mini made before 1997 will still be protected by any patents (20 years max), so you in most cases need have no fear of violating them if you need to replicate a part. But if anything is copyrighted, that lasts 70 years from the death of the author, with different rules for corporate works, so Haynes can definitely come after you for having a downloaded copy of their manual, and BMW, or Heritage, whichever acquired the rights, can come after you for a downloader Rover manual. In the UK you would get a "cease and desist" letter, and if you continued and were taken to court, the copyright owner might be awarded about 4 times the damage that you had done them, say £80 for illegally copying a Haynes manual for personal use, plus court costs which might be high.

 

So we need to be aware of, and respect laws surrounding the bogus term "intellectual property", and as it does directly affect the livelihood of people, I am not against it, and did not say that it was bad as such. But some uses and misuses of the law are just ridiculous.

 

But what is the law about making inferior and often dangerous copies of someone else's design, which may be a registered design or contain patented features? It could be one way of getting rid of the sources of bogus wheel bearings etc. I am sure that Timken's lawyers will be onto it, along with misrepresentation, fraud, counterfeiting etc.

 

On the other hand, if you want free stuff that can be copied, used, modified, sold, given away, etc, as long as you abide by some small restrictions, try installing some free and open source software on your PC or even in your Mini. Not for safety critical stuff of course, but definitely viable for the entertainment system, maybe the digital dashboard, etc. There is free hardware too (free to copy, you would obviously have to pay for the parts or extract them from some discarded equipment). There is nothing to prevent any of us, with some useful Mini modification, publishing it under a free licence so that anyone who wants one can make it for themselves. Or you can go the opposite way, and copyright or patent it, so that no-one else can make it without your agreement, which usually involves a large fee. Both options are ok, you can allow everyone to benefit (and in return expect free support and improvements from the community) or you can run a tightly closed business with total secrecy of your processes.

 

Personally, if I ever design a successful modification for the Mini, I will be hoping to publish it freely with a non-commercial licence so that any of you can make them at home for your own use only, but a Mini supplier making a batch would need to negotiate a fee.

 

So, lest anyone has misunderstood,  I am not against the notion of intellectual property, only its inappropriate use. Knowledge, as such, wants to be free, as someone famous apparently said.

[Spider]

Getting back on track, here's an old JKD listing of the gearbox types and ratios they had available. I see they had a 6 speed helical syncho box !

 

 

On the IP Issue, we have a whole Federal Gov. Department who only looks after IP

 

https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/

 

I think the length of time that IP can be claimed for varies over the world, here in Aust, it's the same as the UK - 75 years.

 

It's real and definable.

Edited by Moke Spider, 16 September 2017 - 07:55 PM.

[tiger99]

I suspect that the IP department came about because in the 1970s Australia had not got around to recognising copyright on software, as the laws had been created before computers were invented. That caused numerous problems, with effects around the world, until they fixed it. For instance, the entire source code of UNIX was quite legally published in a book, possession of which, particularly in the USA, could get you into a lot of trouble. Nowadays Australia is just the same as most other countries, as you say, with a fairly sensible system. The USA is the odd one out in many ways. The book later became legal, because nice, sensible people, when Santa Cruz owned UNIX, eventually released old and no longer commercially viable code to the public. (What came later, with SCO, a different company, suing IBM and half the world, is way off topic and not relevant. It ended very badly for SCO.) The book has been reprinted and can be purchased or free downloads are available. That little episode triggered the imposition of copyright law on software in Australia, which was the right thing to do. I suspect that there had also been IP problems in other fields of endeavour.

 

https://en.wikipedia...ith_Source_Code

 

Nowadays few need the book because they can freely look at Linux or xBSD source code, which is better suited to modern computers. But, almost perversely, those still depend on copyright law for their free licensing, and could probably not have been allowed to be used in Australia if the copyright law was not in place, so it brought an increase in freedom, as well as protection for commercially valuable stuff..It can at first seem to be rather complicated, but isn't really. I do apologise for being off topic.

[StraightCut]

Udo......you know where one is.... that's sitting around.. not being used... Man don't tell me that unless it comes with a contact number...what's the chance....

[tiger99]

I would like to know just who owns the designs and, possibly less importantly, the tooling for their products. I have tried some more to find out what happened, but have drawn a blank, If the company was liquidated, and there is some evidence to suggest that, the liquidator is obliged to sell everything of value to the highest bidder. It does seem that someone, somewhere owns the rights to the twin cam head and the 6 speed box. Maybe that party wants to just sit on them and do nothing, but there must still be money to be made.