cheapest place to pre-order the tim holtz stamp positioner?

Becky Higgins fought tooth and nail for a while before realizing she couldn't win. I suspect that the same will result here. She will go down as the one who mainstreamed the concept but not the only source. I doubt she wins against anyone but hampton arts. She just hopes being a bully will cause competitors to back down. Eventually one won't and if that someone is Tonic, good for them! I have a MISTI and the HA one, but I really really really want the Tonic and was planning to preorder it from acot. But this thread has me nervous.

TBH, if she didn't inflate the price so much as to make it obvious how greedy she is being (it becomes clearer and clearer the more lower priced competition shows up to the market with their own take) and didn't have shitty customer service, more people would be on her side!

Oh please, do tell us more... 

Yay!!!!!!!!!  Thanks, Kat.


Btw, I love ordering from you!!

I wondered that too!

I received that email and responded. My email response was that I would not take the product even if it was free.  I will never buy any product from My Swet Petunia due to the way she conducts herself and her business. Also I'm not a card maker, so I'll wait for the release of Tim's tool because I consider it a far superior design and quality product. 

Thanks

Umm yes! I'm one of her first customers with cracking issues! Granted I didn't buy directly from her, I bought it from SSS, and no, I haven't contacted her directly about it because of all the negative feedback I've seen. I am willing to let it go and simply buy something different, i.e. Tonic's version, but apparently she's trying to stand in the way of that too. I'm not a vengeful person, but at the end of the day, I hope she loses all of her "millions of dollars in sales" because of her greed. There comes a time when you have to let go... and question how many "millions" is enough?

Maybe because they are thinking Petunia sales are going to be slammed to the ground when Tonic is in the clear to sell Tim's platform.  Or the other two companies Kat mentioned, also. Better to get rid of them now before everyone is buying the competitor products.

msliz here is the thread that contains the original link

I regret to have to say I am disappointed in ALL of them. I am a hobbyist in my spare time and a lawyer by training. IMO nobody holds the moral high ground here! Some have a smidgen of design savvy and zero customer service, others have a million-dollar name and great customer service, but they seem to have changed and piggybacked on a couple of colleagues' products when inspiration dried up.  Doesn't equate to any of them being right.

All the die cutting machines seem to be very much alike ( except maybe size) and everybody and his brother makes and sells the same dies designs. Have not seen any lawsuits against these companies. Maybe all the fuss is because MISTI was started by a small company and not a large company. Who knows.

I will make choice based on which manufacturer product best suits my needs and not be concerned with the legal side of the issue.

Scrapnana - there is a blog review of the WRMK letterpress showing it used as a stamp positioner from back in October of 2011. I'll agree that the companies that flat out copied the MISTI were wrong, but the Tonic is quite different in my mind. And the WRMK positioner is much more a twist on their letterpress platform than it is a copy of the MISTI.

You could be right. We shall see. I am not a fan of the Misti lady but I think her patent was of the kind seeking to protect not a wholly original design, not  something brand new from end to end but a "utility" patent to protect a "useful" process. This isn't my area of specialty and it was a while ago when I read about the Misti person's application. I hope honour prevails all round.

The filing paperwork of the lawsuit repeatedly refers to the MISTI as an invention.  Invention implies a unique, original product.  I saw nothing in the filing paperwork or the patent application that indicated what kind of patent was sought and/or granted.

I am not a lawyer. I may have overlooked something or misunderstood the legal language.

Another poster pointed out that WRMK made a stamp positioner that was based on their letterpress rather than duplicating the MISTI. I did not see it demonstrated. I did see the video of the Tonic stamp positioner, and it was definitely different than the MISTI.

Assuming that she patented a "useful process," would that preclude anyone else from creating a stamp positioner that accomplished the same thing, even if their product were different from hers?  If so, how is it that the Accu-cut manual die cutter and the Big Shot/Big Kick from another company, both roller die cutters, can share the market? They use the same process, but Accu-cut came out with their roller cutting system years before the Big Shot/Big Kick came on the market.

I agree that it is wrong to copy someone else's invention/design/artwork/literary works, etc. That is why we have patent and copyright laws. However, there seem to be certain things that most of the public do not fully understand, myself among them.  I know something about derivative works and copyright law. I assume that the same holds true for patents.  The MISTI seems essentially the equivalent of a derivative work.  Nothing in the MISTI is that unique. She added rulers and a magnetic surface to a slightly adapted letterpress.  I find it a bit mind-boggling that she could patent that, since she did not create the letterpress concept.