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Cybergun is an interesting case. I have been ruminating over it since I bought my Cybergun FAMAS 3 years ago. I had read many posts on many forums asking "real" airsofters to boycott Cybergun.
Let us step back and consider this case dispassionately, without emotion. Patent and Copyright law is the problem here. One of the responsiblilities of living in the "1st" world is that we have agreed on patent and copyright laws. The gun manufacturers are going to get a royalty of airsoft sales in 1st world nations. WANT TO KNOW WHY THE CLONES ARE CHEAPER WITHOUT THE CG MONIKER? BECAUSE THEY ARE ILLEGAL GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. The royalties are not paid so the price can be a bit lower.
So, we have established that the gun companies are eligible for royalties. How are they going to get them? negotiate with chinese companies to pay royalties? IMPOSSIBLE. or nearly so. How about be their own Cybergun? Well they clearly don't want to be responsible for that, they just want their royalties. OK, so they choose to form Cybergun or some enterprising people form Cybergun and the gun companies use it to handle their licences in the airsoft field. Fair enough, say the airsoft community, BUT why do they simply rebrand Chinese clones / crap and just collect money and do administration? Isn't that an immoral and unethical business model?
Well, let us now look at the alternative. Cybergun, an EU company representing EU and North American companies, has to manufacture its own product to appease the airsoft elite of the 1st world. OK, who has done that??? Oh, Magpul. They still farm out most of their production to China and we all love those prices!! Now imagine if Cybergun produced whole guns in the EU or Canada or the US for that matter! How about an officially licenced FN F2000 built in Cyberguns new EU based plant in Caen, France. State of the art facility with 300 employees making $45-190K per year. This lovely F2000 can be had delivered in Canada for a mere 1900 Euros, or about $3800 Canadian. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT CYBERGUN TO DO? Or maybe it would be a good idea to use a Chinese factory (like every other industry does) to produce these legally trademarked guns and we can have that nice F2000 delivered to Canada for 5 or 6 hundred dollars, not thousands.
Cybergun is helping us out sometimes too. Notice that their prices are dropping a bit. You will also notice that there will be no more Cybergun Beretta M9's. They are all Taurus PT92's now. They are the exact same KJW M9 but Beretta wanted 22% of each gun sale for itself. Cybergun turned to Taurus who agreed to 7% royalty. Much more reasonable. Thank you Cybergun, good thing Beretta wasn't allowed to just dictate what it wants. . . That also leaves Beretta without a licence handler, so that leaves the market open for someone in the community to step in and show us how to "properly" do it.
One more point to think about: People wonder why I can't get them Glocks. Glocks, in airsoft form are illegal in the 1st world. Glock has decided not to allow anyone to licence its patents, therefore I cannot legally get a glock in Canada for anyone.
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