Hey all,
Sorry; I know this is getting redundant. One of my bicycling friends, Nick Crook, in England wrote the following about Hetchins Co. of David Miller and Hetchins Ltd. of Mark Joynt. Most of this has been covered previously.
(Nick is a bicyclist and lawyer (solicitor in England?) who was good friends of custom bicycle builder Roy Cottingham. Roy, who died several years ago, made extra fancy lugged frames that were inspired by Hetchins. Of course, Roy never called his bikes anything other than "Cottinghams" Nick helped Roy's widow sell off the remaining dozen fancy lugged frames.)
Nick Crook wrote:
Subject: Hetchins Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 17:44:15 -0000 From: Nick Crook <nick.crook@healdweb.com> To: "'strattonh@insightbb.com'" <strattonh@insightbb.com>
Dear Strat
Hetchins saga is interesting. I logged on to Classic rendezvous to check out more..I subscribed so I could reply, but this filled my inbox with junk in no time so I had to un-sub pronto before I'd replied...
But, tho' the Marks ( Joynt and Reilly) were entitled to register company names and websites if they were vacant, it's quite clear that David Miller has authority from the owners of the Hetchins name (who bought the rights from the liquidators of Bob Jackson) to make frames. In doing so he has carried on and enhanced the Hetchins reputation.
So when the Marks started to trade as Hetchins they were immediately 'passing off' ie. trading on and profiting from Hetchins reputation which they had not created. David M is entitled to sue them to stop them and to get them to pay him their profits.
In fact I rang up David Miller yesterday to tell him. He was very laid back about it and pointed out that he makes hardly any money out of this - both he and his framebuilder have other jobs as well. He knows of Omega and thinks they thought it would be a goldmine but they have not sold much - he reckons they spent about £5000 going to a bike show in California and they won't ever recoup this in sales. So he does not want to sue, tho' I think he will get a bit better organised. Incidentally, he knew Roy Cottingham, and had a good respect for his work.
I don't know why Omega were so naïve - a few seconds on a search engine brings up Hetchins.org from which you can find David Miller's details and rights in a few clicks.
Checking at Companies House for England shows that Omega Cycleworks Ltd was dissolved on 26 Nov, and there's a proposal to strike off Hetchins Cycles Ltd for so that won't last long either. Collapse of not very stout party.
By the way, I know what I'm talking about as this is my area in legal terms. If you want to extract the kernel of this to send to Classicrdv then please do. I would have emailed them myself but can't receive volumes of email here so had to un-subscribe.
That's it. Stay cool and steer clear of the dodgy Marks, Nick
Heald Solicitors, Ashton House, 495 Silbury Boulevard, Central Milton Keynes, MK9 2AH United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1908 662277 Fax : +44 (0)1908 675667 For further information see our Website at http://www.healdweb.com
Reposted by Stratton Hammon Louisville, Kentucky, USA Who's pretty sure that his '63 Magnum Bonum is both original and authentic :-)