Martin Shoover has contacted me to inform me about that :

Hello, I was looking through pictures on flickr today from your event from August and I see a picture where you have given an award to a technic plagiarized model. This model was designed by Nicholas Lespour(Nico71) from France and he has full instructions download for this model at his website here from 2011

http://www.nico71.fr/morgan-three-wheeler/

Here is the flickr picture that I found of the award winner from your Brickfair show

The color is changed, but is exactly the same model. I contact Nico71 and let him know about this as well. Plagiarism is something very important that you must be aware of at all times and who is in charge of picking best technic model award should be experienced enough to know this. People frown upon stealing models from others. Awards should be given to people who deserve them and build their own models, not someone else's who are kind enough to post free instructions for all to build.

I have no word. The morgan I think is a known moc so I don't understand how it is possible for the organizers of the show to be fooled.

Any informations would be interesting for me, name of this thief would be nice.

see it from the following point of view: your threewheeler has won the contest, now the cheater should send you the prize! if not send the french foreign legion to his adress

Edited September 6, 201212 yr by efferman

If you build a model with instructions you should always make it clear and certainly never submit to a contest

unbelievable, taking inspiration and ideas is what a forum is all about, but a complete rip off and then to win is sad, really sad.

Sorry to read such crappy news Nico

On the upside you've designed an award winning model.

Still, the thief is a blatant cheater. I thought this was going to be one of those posts where someone claims their MOC's been stolen and really the MOCs are just a bit similar, but this case is a total and exact copy.

Are you contacting the show organizers? - They can revoke the award and contact the winner (who must have registered with them to display 'their' creation/s).

The perpetrator's name is Scott Anderson.

I'll ask around on the Ambassador forum to see if I can find out more.

I don't really understand how this Scott Anderson guy thought he would get away with this.

Brickfair is so huge, people would certainly notice this blatant plagiarism.

Yes, Jetro read the MOC card on the large Flickr photo correctly -- it's Scott Anderson from Alexandria, Virginia (outside Washington D.C.). Perhaps Paul Boratko has met him?

I did a little research on the Aug 2012 Brickfair Virginia website, and found this list of Scott Anderson's "MOCs". Alas, when you click on his name, there is no e-mail address or other contact information.

Edited September 6, 201212 yr by DLuders

People like that disgust me!

I'm sorry to hear that. I was at Brickfair and saw this model. I knew I had seen that design before, somewhere. I didn't occur to me that it wasn't that person's original creation. Hopefully you'll get some sort of official credit for it. It's a really nice design.

I had a feeling this might turn into a problem...

As soon as Scott took this piece out of the box to display it, I knew that it was Nico's model and believe me, Scott didn't deny it, nor did he make any attempt to pass it off as his own... Looking back now, he probably should have unchecked the "MOC not available to be chosen for award" box when he registered it... It also should have included something saying where the instructions for it could be found and who the original designer was...

Technic is not very popular over here in the United States and I would say that 99.99% of the attendees at Brickfair(as well as the public spectators) had never seen that model before and I certainly wasn't going to make a big fuss over it... I was happy that I actually got to see the model in person...

I also don't think that Ian, who was in charge of the Technic/Mindstorms had any clue that it belonged to someone other than the guy who brought it... Ian was more involved in the Mindstorms theme and helping with the GBC... I am not sure if he nominated the 4 models that the attendees voted on or not...

I too got an e-mail last night from Martin and as he requested, I passed it on along to Todd and Ian...

There was probably no ill will, but there certainly was ample space on the card to mention the original author. Simply doing that would have avoided the whole situation, and it wouldn't have made the model any less spectacular.

Isn't the point of these shows to display your own MOC? I've been to shows before and seen some less than spectacular models, but at least they were designed by the person who brought them to the show. Perhaps Brickfair needs to find someone with more experience to be in charge of selecting the Technic models for award consideration next year. I hate seeing plagiarism in Lego models and Paul, I know that you've had plenty of people do this to you.

One of the reasons I’ve never really got into the making instructions thing. I know it can be profitable but for me, being a TFOL/AFOL is about building something new on your own. Anyone can assemble a set/MOC from instructions. It doesn’t build creativity or artistic tallent.

Technic is not very popular over here in the United States

Where the technic is popular?

Well this sucks . I normally try to see where an honest mistake could be made in situations like this, but here I can't see any. He knew the design wasn't his, he knew it was being entered into a competition of MOCs (MY OWN creation).

Where the technic is popular?

All over Europe but mostly Germany and UK I think.

Edited September 6, 201212 yr by allanp

Where the technic is popular?

Well, I can assure you that here in the states it is probably the least popular in the world. For example, I was looking over many diferent picture sets at Flickr that people took from this last brickfair and other than the Morgan 3 Wheeler, I didn't see any technic models and I know Paul had his cars there, so that should tell you something.

Yes.

We can also see how TLG try to break into the US market with Technic : 9395, 9397 and 9398, mainly.

Technic is also popular in Poland and France.

I had a feeling this might turn into a problem...

As soon as Scott took this piece out of the box to display it, I knew that it was Nico's model and believe me, Scott didn't deny it, nor did he make any attempt to pass it off as his own... Looking back now, he probably should have unchecked the "MOC not available to be chosen for award" box when he registered it... It also should have included something saying where the instructions for it could be found and who the original designer was...

Thanks Paul for your post. I don't think it is a big problem. It is lego. Concerning that, maybe you are right, Scoot is not a thief. The fact is I have searched in my mailbox and he sent me an email the 25th of Jannuray to show me his version of my Morgan with the black/red color scheme. We discussed about it and that is all. He never talked to show it at Brickfair. I have not remenbered that before.

I am lukewarm, on a side, Scoot could have missed something and the morgan could have been considered as an entry for the contest. But in an other side, when the staff has rewarded the creation, he didn't said "it is not my creations!", he has accepter the trophy. I hope scoot will be able to give me more informations.

There was probably no ill will, but there certainly was ample space on the card to mention the original author. Simply doing that would have avoided the whole situation, and it wouldn't have made the model any less spectacular.

Yes, It would be nice to have that and as you said, avoided the situation.

Where the technic is popular?

In France ! Lego technic stand are nearly one of the biggest stand :)

I don't know if he meant harm or not, but it's still wrong that he won a prize by entering somebody else's MOC.

By the look of things, this dude also plagiarized a bunch of other stuff, but this takes the cake, shoves it in a Corvette, and peels off down the street in a cloud of tire smoke with said cake in the passenger seat.

Well this sucks . I normally try to see where an honest mistake could be made in situations like this, but here I can't see any. He knew the design wasn't his, he knew it was being entered into a competition of MOCs (MY OWN creation).

Thing is, Entering it in the Competition might have been a mistake.

Not giving credit to the designer and information about the available instructions is questionable.

Accepting the reward is simply unaccepable.

Edited September 6, 201212 yr by Sato

I think it is rather foolish to display a design of somebody else without crediting, and then entering it in a moc competition does not make sense.

Then it is clear you want to suggest it is your own design and creativity. You don't win awards by making a model from existing instructions.

I display other people's MOCs at conventions all the time. For example, last year I displayed some of Crowkiller's cars and Jurgen Krooshoop's Sunbeam. The year before I showed Jennifer Clark's JS220, Grazi's truck, and Barman's V-8. This year I am showing all of RoscoPC's F1 cars. In all cases I coordinated with the original designers to make sure they were aware of the display, and of course I credited the designers on the MOC cards. It is not impossible that one or more of these would win an award, especially since there are so few other Technic models at the con to choose from. If one of them did win, I'd assume the award really belonged to the original designer. Remember that the award in not cash or anything, it is just a LEGO trophy. I'd probably display it with the model or offer to send it to the original designer.

I'm a little hurt when people say that those who build other people's MOCs from instructions are not real fans or are cheating in some way. Not everyone has the same skills. I suck at building my own MOCs, but I'm pretty good at rendering and writing and making instructions so I contribute in that way and get a lot of enjoyment out of the building process.

I don't know Scott or exactly what he did in this case other than what Paul and Nico have provided, but I wouldn't assume he was trying to cheat anyone. He probably should have been more clear on the MOC card and to the event organizers about who the designer was though.

For what it's worth, I am the Technic Coordinator at BrickCon this year so I'll be selecting the winner for Best Technic. That also means I can't win, so don't worry about that! Hopefully I have enough knowledge of the MOCs that are out there that I would recognize a copy.

You can see some of my displays of other people's MOCs from previous conventions here:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3801648

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3801649

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=4152483

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=4147579

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=5209611

NOW that is not right. Nico built and designed the model. HOW DARE the plagarist use it to win the contest... the prize should go to the 2nd place or nico

What Scott Anderson should have done was to write clearly (on his MOC card) who the designer of the Morgan was (Nico71 -- Nicolas Lespour). I too like to build other peoples' Lego Technic creations and display them (with proper credit) at Lego conventions. As an example, this Lego Technic Optimus Prime model (shown below) won the "Most Heroic" award category at Seattle's Brickcon 2011, but I made clear that it was a "collaborative" design effort between Nathan Gibson (Transbot9) and me. The MOC card made it clear that it was not solely my design -- Nathan designed the basic shape and "tranforming" mechanisms and I altered the parts used.

I was the Brickcon 2011 Technic Coordinator, and recognized that some of the Technic models displayed there were not really "MOCs" so I did not consider them for the "Best Technic" prize. My Technic entries were not eligible for Technic prizes, due to a "conflict of interest". I don't have a problem seeing (or displaying) the works of other Technic masters from around the world, but recognize that the original designers should get full credit.

The Brickcon category "prizes" were just some simple 8x8 Lego trophy, but the real prize was glory for the original designer. Nico71 should have gotten full credit for his Morgan displayed at Brickfair Virginia 2012.