The Mech Touch novel Chapter 958

People copying other people’s works happened all the time. Why not? It saved them a lot of time and effort. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, why not steal someone else’s design of a wheel and thereby save a lot of time and effort that could have been spent on more fruitful activities?

Even Ves did so himself a few times back on Aeon Corona VII. The incentive of ripping off other people’s works constantly beckoned to him, and hardly anything held him back from using these shortcuts.

In ordinary circumstances, the MTA’s licensing system did a good job of tracking how much other mech designers copied from other designs. Not only that, the MTA automatically allocated an appropriate proportion of earnings to the original designers.

In general, it was cheaper to license an existing design and use those rights to develop a derivative mech model. Mech designers who ’borrowed’ elements from other designs in a blatant manner would usually get slapped with a heftier charge afterwards.

The entire point of the licensing system was to legalize the instinctive act of ’borrowing’ or getting ’inspired’ by the excellent works of others. Before the MTA instituted the licensing system, the mech industry became a wild west of corporate espionage and endless lawsuits about accusations of stealing someone else’s designs or ideas.

The patent systems regulating the innovation of each individual state resulted in a horrible mess of endless litigation and confusion as different jurisdictions imposed different legal standards and customs. In addition, states tended to favor their domestic mech designers over foreign mech designers in pretty blatant ways.

Therefore, when the MTA finally laid down the law and introduced the licensing system to essentially legalize, regulate and monetize the act of stealing someone else’s mech design or component design, the mech industry finally became more tolerable for the smaller players who couldn’t afford the army of lawyers required to argue their sides of the story.

These days, the MTA’s own people and AIs made their own judgement how much mech designers borrowed from other mech designers. While it was possible for the mech designers involved to dispute the MTA’s judgement, few did so, as this organization enjoyed a very good reputation of impartiality.

Of course, no system was perfect. It didn’t deal too well with concurrent innovations developed separately but shared too much in common. Usually such disputes ended in contentious compromises that pleased neither parties involved.

Another huge hole in the licensing system was that it mainly held force in the public mech markets.

What if someone ripped off someone else’s design but never published them on the market?

Mechs designs intended for a specific client usually didn’t go through MTA validation, thereby denying the huge organization an opportunity to get a good look whether they stole something or not. Chasing after this low-key, behind-the-scenes thievery required a lot of initiative on the part of the original mech designer’s legal representatives.

Another big blind spot was the black market, the frontier market and any other unregulated market. Places where the influence of the MTA didn’t extend became the favored paradises for mech designers with loose hands.

"I knew that pirate designers are completely shameless in ripping off other people’s designs, but why does it have to be one of mine?!"

Ves gnashed his teeth as he studied the mech model that the Blind Men predominantly adopted.

"Blue Paradisio, eh? Let’s see where this mech model comes from and who dares to copy my work." _{frёeωebɳovel.com}

Digging into the intelligence files provided by the friends of the Swordmaidens, he found out that the Blue Paradisio was a recent work from a young pirate designer called Ronnie Blast. Ves didn’t look surprised when Ronnie Blast’s record stated that he was an Apprentice Mech Designer who originated from the Bright Republic.

"Sounds like an alias."

The record failed to mention why Ronnie got exiled to the frontier, but he somehow became a pirate designer under the umbrella of the Dragon Alliance.

From there, this fellow pumped out various pirated mech designs that mixed and mashed elements of various legitimate designs into versions that were more practical to the frontier.

As Ves studied Ronnie’s mech catalog in more detail, he found his works to be full of borrowed elements that were actually quite decent. This plagiarizer knew what to look out for and had an eye for practical quality.

Of course, the shortcoming of every plagiarizing mech designer was that they almost always showed inadequate ability when it came to designing something themselves. Ronnie’s mashup designs attempted to fuse several existing design elements together, but it was exactly in these transitions where his designs exposed severe flaws.

A competent mech designer would have known better than to include these flaws and fault lines into their own designers. Someone like Ronnie who relied too much on copying good designs lacked the skill and experience to replicate the efforts of their betters.

Ves made a judgement about Ronnie as a mech designer. "Someone like Ronnie should be decent enough when making variants of existing designs. However, he isn’t capable of making the transition to designing original mechs."

Fortunately for him, the frontier mech markets openly tolerated pirated designs to the point where they became ubiquitous. When Ves once asked Ketis if pirate designers ever respected the intellectual property of legitimate mech designers, she laughed in his face!

"Trash like Ronnie are only able to thrive in these lawless markets where the pirates who buy his mechs don’t know any better."

The MTA’s validation process would have issued a ton of negative marks on his designs. If they somehow to the MTA’s approval to get sold, they would still have to reserve the bulk of their earnings to pay off the forced licensing fees.

"I’ll remember you, Ronnie."

Having marked out this mech designer for later, Ves turned back to the mech model the Blind Men adopted recently. They actually incurred huge debts to modernize their mech roster, and actually fell into a somewhat bad spot in the Dragon Alliance for that. No wonder they ran off all the way to the Woolox System.

The Blue Paradisio appeared to be a cross between the landbound Crystal Lord and another spaceborn rifleman mech design. What Ves found fault with the design was that the Crystal Lord depended rather heavily on quality materials and good craftsmanship, both of which the Blue Paradisio lacked.

"The Crystal Lord is a design with strict quality requirements. It’s a mech model that’s always been geared towards leaders and champions. Ronnie completely missed the point of my second original design."

To Ves, it appeared that Ronnie took no notice of the vision for the Crystal Lord’s intended use. He only saw something shiny and crudely copied the design while at the same time cutting all kinds of corners in an effort to make it cheaper and easier to fabricate in frontier conditions.