Ladyfisher, my friend told me that legal advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Sounds like our counsel are agreed on that one

drolfson Posted: Aug 24, 2006 2:50 pm Post subject:

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Boy, I didn't mean to really start a ruckus.
drolfson, you did not start a ruckus... this is a very sore point for some people for good reasons.

AS a matter of interest... well I was intrigued;
I was tying flies last year at the British Fly Fair when an Italian gentleman called Massetti introduced himself and suggested he was the creator of Waterwisp.
Following a bemused question and answer/banter session I now remain unsure as to what the reality is.

Mr Massetti was extremely embarrassed as to having caused me any discomfort and extremely insistent that he had no prior knowledge of my work.
He had found out lately of my claim, allegedly.
He was very convincing and made all the right noises - so much so that I am almost tempted to try to believe what he said; which was that he had neither copied me nor had a fly of mine given to him on the Avon.
He said he came up with the idea while trying to simplify the application of parachute hackling technique.

Whereas my publication is certainly prior art - the magazine my fly was first published in, the Newsletter of the Fly Dressers' Guild , was not registered with an ISBN number until much later than 1983, thus may not have been available to the Patent Office - though I think it really ought to have been!

Whatever the reality, I had a couple of years of being really mad about it, when I became aware of Waterwisp; in fact my health suffered.

Thus, I still hold on to my claim of originality, though I can no longer claim that I have been plagiarised - without a doubt.
Now there may be room for reasonable doubt.. just a tiny one.

Now I do not know what to think, NEVER will.

I am not apologising to anyone but it is time well overdue to stop getting my head twisted about it

Again thanks for the encouragement which I have had from many FAOLer's on this issue and for those excellent persons who helped keep me sane.
You all know who you are - many famous - some even banned, now

The reasons I posted this here yesterday were to see how closely you all thought the flies to compare and to give a day to mull it over.

MY advice is that if you have invented a great fly which works for you, get your friends across the internet to test it for you, by publishing it . When you see it later in Sally Salmon's catalog, you can prove your prior claim

Happy tying and publishing,
Roy