Spanish Patent Quirks: Anitua Y Charola's Copy of the Merwin & Hulbert
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
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The firm of Anitua Y Charola in Eibar, Spain (later renamed Charola Y Anitua) was founded in 1880 or 1881, and their first substantial product was a copy of the American Merwin & Hulbert revolver. They were made with hopes of getting Spanish military adoption, and thus were chambered for the .44 S&W American cartridge instead of the .44-40 Winchester cartridge that the original Merwin & Hulbert used. The military acceptance never did come, but the guns were in production for about 15 years.
An interesting quirk of Spanish patent law was that a product had to be actually produced in Spain in order to qualify for patent protection. None of the major small arms developers had manufacturing facilities in Spain, and so most never bothered to take out Spanish patents - and Spanish gunmakers rampantly copied European and American designs. In this case, though, Anitua took the rather brazen step of patenting the Merwin & Hulbert system them selves in Spain! To make things more interesting, a legal fight then developed between Anitua and the rival company Orbea Hermanos, who claimed to have been making the Merwin & Hulber system first...
Many thanks to Mike Carrick of Arms Heritage Magazine for providing me access to film this example!
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Having a machine that is beat to shit over decades and is still around tells me that it was a good design and well manufactured.
Yep. And that's why you won't see old guns in a hundred years. The stuff being made now isn't built to last, like this.
@@johndaniels1197 This guy seriously saying that ARs, AKs, and Modernized Browning HPs aren’t gonna last another 100+ years when they’ve lasted for nearly 50+ years now and still going.
@@johndaniels1197 It doesn't matter. It will last, because there is no ammo.
@@lostalone9320 nope. As long as it's the same receiver, it's the same gun. Legally speaking, in the US. Other countries have different controlled parts (often barrel and slide for pistols).
I know a guy that has shot out at least 2 barrels in a 1911 (Para P16-40, actually) since 1996. Replace barrel, link, and bushing, gun is good to go again. Maybe the slide stop, too.
My CZ has a known trouble part of the slide stop. Those break every so often, people who shoot them in competition tend to keep a half dozen on hand.
Not a "grandfather's axe" problem when you have replaced the handle 3x and the head twice.
Just because the gun DESIGN has been around for 60,70 or 80 t
years,Ak or Ar, THAT DOESN'T MAKE THE GUN 60-80 years old ,does it? I mean there will not be many 1960 ARs being used now!? But this gun IS around 130 years old
Winchester was very careful to assemble guns in Spain to keep their patent rights when they were trying to interest the spanish military. I believe the protection on the 1873 lasted up until 1892. Winchester didnt bother with their 1892 and thus we got the El Tigre rifles
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Not that popular, since it was pulled out of several users by then, and ammo was scarce. But it was available to supply rear echelon units (the ones most often in the propaganda pictures and didn't need that much ammo.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine The Tigre rifle was more popular after the civil war, used by the Guardia Civil and gamekeepers.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine They were super popular civilian hunting guns and a few police organisations used them. I pretty much wrote the wikipedia on them. Interesting fact is that for the 23 years they were made Garate held a registered design on them. At one point they changed the front sight and barrel length because the previous protection expired
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigre_(rifle)
Mike Carrick has such a fantastic and varied collection. I'm glad he has shared so much of it with us.
Merwin & Hubert's always stand out for how modern they look compared to all the other revolvers' of the era. It's always great to see a video on them much thanks to the pistols owner.
Coming soon a mistery pistol book of spanish knock offs... that would be realy interesting.
Could certainly be done but it wouldn't be so much of a mystery though. The majority of spanish arms makers clearly marked what they made even if it was copied from someone else because that was legally allowed as Ian states. The big thing about a lot of the chinese manufacture is that they were trying to imply that their guns weren't locally produced and thus its nearly impossible to trace who made most of the non-arsenal produced versions.
@@alexsis1778 dont like "mistery pistols" ok. regardless, a book by Ian or headstamp publishing on spanish knock off pistols would be great anyways.. Cheers!
Sign me up
of course going by the channel content, they'd need to do either a M1911/variants book or a Mauser-System book next. Those two alone probably make up 40% of all Forgotten Weapons videos.
i think the forgotten weapons logo is also antique. But in a positive way.
The real forgotten weapon is the musical intro
@@chekovsgunman actually there's one before that brother.
👬🏳️🌈👨❤️👨🏳️🌈👬
@@chekovsgunman the best. He should've just shortened it by playing from the last 3rd.
Spain has such an interesting history, and I appreciate their flattery of others' firearms designs. My favorites include the many adaptations of the 1911, and the.380s. Now I think Turkey has overtaken Spain in the copy department!
The Turkish HK copies are made on HKs old tooling.
@@ScottKenny1978 Not even old is in "used". HKs business model was for a long time to design a weapon and then sell the tooling and the license to other states. (You want the G3? Cool, we set the production up for you for $XYZ and in addition you pay us $ABC for each gun you produce.) Today the tooling division is a different company called "Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen" and does not have any connection with HK, but if you google the companys logo you clearly see that it once was a HK division. They are now specialised in multi-spindle machining, which i guess makes sense for a former weapon production tooling manufacturer.
@@robert8984 did not know that, cool!
The Chinese factories copy absolutely everything, and also make variations of things you won't find elsewhere like a 7,62 Tokarev chambered pistol based on the Sig P226. We just don't see any of them in the United States because the only firearms that can be legally imported from China currently are sporting shotguns.
@@johndaniels1197 well, yeah. Norinco was caught shipping full auto AKs to the gangs in the 1980s or 90s.
Merwin & Hulbert : we did this.
Anitua Y Charolas : you did this ? I did this !
-"I'm Walking Here."
-"No, I'm Walking Here!"
Orbea Hermanos: "No, WE did this!"
I mean, if you're going to steal then steal from the best.
Yeah, why steal something cheap ? I mean, if you're going to be a thief, be a high class thief ! 😁
6:57 "Hey steal your own design. I stole mine the fair way"
I actually own a couple of these Spanish revolvers. What people don’t know it that you had 3 years to set up a factory in Spain for your firearm production. If after 3 years your company didn’t do that- according to Spanish laws of the time- it was fair game.
And some of the bigger Spanish arms houses did their own improvements- like the Astra Firecat that was almost a copy of the Browning.25 Auto.
(My Firecat was made in 1937 and still shoots amazingly accurately for a .25 ACP.
I love how much time and information you put into your videos Ian. Keep the great content coming 👍
I was curious about the stock. Rock Island Auction had one Merwin & Hulbert with a shoulder stock. It appears that the cut in the frame is where the stock would be tensioned. One claw hooking the bottom of the grip and another screwed down inside the cutout.
It's been a bit since I've read the book, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of the History of Merwin and Hulbert, and in it the author mentioned that there were a very small amount special ordered with a stock attachment, and what you described matches what I remember from the book.
I love it when you show off antiques, there is always a great story, and an informative history lesson. Thank you Boss 🤘🤓
Came across one of these today but the Merwin & Hulbert type chambered in .38. customer found it wrapped in paper in their attic. It was pretty sweet.
Spanish arms manufacturers:
- Originality: -10%
- Quality: 90%
- Inquisition: Unexpected
Among their chief weapons are: CETME, Astra, Anitua Y Charola, and an almost ruthless devotion to the Pope!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Spanish steel
Of course they filed a patent! After going to all that trouble to steal the Merwin and Hulbert design, they obviously didn’t want one of their Spanish competitors to steal their stolen design. After all, that’s what patents are for, right? To protect their stolen design!🤣🤣🤣
It's the nature of the beast [the Spanish patent system of the time.] Can't knock'em for taking advantage of it...
Such sanctimoniousness; this was a good policy if you sought to build up national industries, which in this case would later pay dividends during WWI and II, incidentally the US had previously done much the same and had been internationally generally known as a producer of inferior goods.
I have to wonder if Merwin and Hulbert payed Anitua Y Charola to patent their revolver in Spain, in order to have some control over who was making the copies. (and really to keep un-regulated Spanish production from burying them.)
@@SgtBeltfed Possibly, but I doubt it. Given the (obviously) predatory nature of Spanish firearms manufacturing, filing a 'native' patent would have been done to protect their slice of a (stolen) pie.
Merwin & Hulbert, along with other firearms manufacturers, upon learning of a Spanish copy would probably shrug, muttering something about "Spanish bandits" and gone about their business.
We stole it fair and square
Now that was a fantastic story , thank you Ian.
I’m never up this early, I feel so special being among the first to see the newest video
Very interesting info not only on the gun but the patent laws. Love the Merwin & Hulbert design. Beautiful pistols that were somewhat ahead of their time
"Reformado y Privilegiado" = Modified and Enhanced.
Reformado -> modified, yes. But I am sure "privilegiado" here means, as Ian suggests, "patented". "Privilegio de invención" is an old term of art in Spanish law which means basically a patent.
@@MarzoVarea Creo que tienes razòn.
It is a good looking design, if a little eccentric.
Orbea also did great bicycles, they still do bicycles but not firearms.
👍 to Mike for allowing another visit to his gun room. I'll bet rumaging through his place would keep you busy for a while. Lol
Thank you , Ian .
Fun Fact: Orbea (the company they had the patent trial with) nowdays is very famous bicylce company
Yes, and Orbea on argentina is still making shotgun shells and rifle ammo
This "Spanish Patent" law springs to mind how Chinese companies are learing the manufacturing business in last 30 years. But sticking to Spain, you needed to "manufacture the object of the patent in Spain"... fine, how high was that bar to clear? Was there a minimum requirement of number of the gun to be produced in Spain? What counted as "manufactiring" in this context? I just wonder if it was possible to a non-Spanish company to send kits of parts to Spain, assembly 10-20 products there and file for local patent just to prevent this knock-off scheme.
It sounds like they could have, but once you add in the legal fees it also sounds like most non-spanish companies thought "meh, where's the value?" Spanish knockoff guns don't seem to have been as big an issue in the world market as knockoff designer labels are now.
The majority of the spanish arms industry prior to WW1 only really catered to the local market and didn't really sell abroad so it wasn't really worth the effort for most of the manufacturers unless they were specifically trying to interest the Spanish military in their weapon. One example of this would be Winchester's 1873 model where they did exactly what you suggest. They made most of the metal components and shipped them to spain for final fitting out and assembly. Don't remember the specifics but the law does require a certain amount of the gun be made locally so it was more than just assembling a parts kit. They actually just contracted with a local gun maker to do it in their name to keep their patent enforceable.
@@alexsis1778 thank you for your input, very interesting.
@@leszekkadelski9569 According to another commenter further up Winchester did precisely this: have their guns assembled in Spain so they could claim "manufacture".
I suspect strongly, that it would have been possible to do so. At first.
But then of course the law would have "mysteriously" ended up being amended to further protect the interests of the local producers, so you'd need to either make a larger number of guns (although as small as many Spanish companies seem to have been that would have been counterproductive) or to do all the machining inside Spain, which then would have been prohibitively expensive.
Still, I am amazed that there wasn't a collaboration of the big weapons producers to build a neutral workshop for exactly those purposes... have a small shop where a number of guns could be made to get full patent protection. To avoid the knock offs to appear internationally at the very least.
Well if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then M&H should've been very flattered! For its age, and after several lifetimes of fairly rough treatment, I'd say that revolver is in great shape - I should look that good lol
Thank you sir great video
Think I've guessed what ur next book will be, Spanish patent copyright handguns
Ian you need to get your hands on a Mexican FX-05 Xiuhcoatl rifle, I'd love to see one in detail.
Speaking of gun copies, did any company get copied more than Colt? With the Colt SAA, the 1911 and the AR, Yes I know they were not all Colt designs, but they took major manufacturing of those models. Now everybody and their brother has a 1911, AR and SAA.
I have another example of Spanish copies of American firearms, a TAC copy of a S&W Model 10 .38. Mine is nickel plated and in quite good condition. DA and SA trigger pulls are much heavier as is the effort to pull the hammer back. But it was cheap to buy and would make a good truck gun. If I had a truck.
'Aneetooa ee charola'- for those wondering how to pronounce it
Orbea nowadays is a bicycle company, and they are quite good.
Anitua also became a bicycle company. They merged with Gárate to form Gárate Anítua y Compañía or G.A.C. Many small arms manufacturers followed suit in the 30's like Behistegui Hermanos (BH). My grandfather bought a large order of bicycles from BH just before the Civil War for his workers in Mérida.
@@miguelangelsimonfernandez5498 I guess Eibar changed from being "los armeros" to become "los ciclistas"
A large part of the Spanish arms manufacturers are making bicycles or sewing machines nowadays
I wonder in the lanyard was the lower connection for the stock?
It may be a long shot but I want to believe the "improvements" are more than just a nice word and perhaps refer to the internals of the revolver, I don't know if this truly is the case but sometimes the internals in copies are simplified in a positive way that patent complying guns couldn't replicate since they have to work around which mechanisms were patented at the time (like when American revolvers had to work around the design of early Colts).
Hey. . . I just stumbled over something in wikipedia and I had to think about your channel, I haven’t been here in a while, and whatever. . .
"Luger 'Night Pistol' with tactical light"
WTF!
I read about these weapons years ago - Armas y municiones, a magazine -. If I remember properly, the model was quite popular among Guardia Civil officers.
the 44 caliber was standard issue for the Tigre rifle (winchester) issued to the Guardia Civil
Desert Sméagol I’d recommend an S&W or a Ruger .357 magnum, it gives you 2 revolvers in one. You can shoot magnums for carry loads, but train with the cheaper 38 special. There are other makers out there, but they won’t have the back up that Smith or Ruger have
All i have to say is that this looks cool
Very unique Revolver !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Being somewhat of a gunsmith I have an idea about the shoulder stock on pistol. It could have been designed to have one unscrew the lanyard ring and attach the stock at that point with a bolt attached to the shoulder stock. Just an idea. What do you think Ian?
Fascinating story
When I heard about the patent thing, I could only imagine el risitas (rip legend) laughing his ass of lol.
Pretty cool pistol! I enjoyed this.
God bless all here
I wonder if you could file a Spanish patent and setup a one man "Custom Shop" that you would have make all of your custom orders in order to cover the legal requirements.
Winchester did assembly in Spain precisely for this reason. The precise wording of the law would probably dictate whether "some part of the manufacturing process" would have to occur for every gun, or just some guns, to qualify.
I wonder how many rounds were actually fired prematurely during loading :D
So to clear misfired/dud primer rounds, you'd have to full on disassemble the thing?
Oh no wait, you could probably finagle them out the loading gate.
I have a Anitua y Garate revolver in 6.35mm
Was that a later iteration of this company?
Combat must have been conducted at a very leisurely pace to allow for the slow reloads.
No one expects the Spanish Patent-Infringement!!
I'll see myself out.
😁
We still remember the Maine treacherous aliby
I absolutely LOVE M&H revolver, you know, it's kinda hard to get one here in germany, after 6 years (!) I finally got a fairely oxidated nickeled peace in 44-40 after a lot (!) of paperwork and waiting times (plural), now I see that our almost-neighbors made one that's even niver (in my opinion), Im not a fan of all the nickel stuff they made, awesome revolver in itself though, but M&H went a bit overboard with Nickel IMO, exspecially the later (better obtainable, at least for me) ones. You don't wanna know what I had to pay for mine btw in the end. Preposterous. OK, now I'm thinking of holidays in spain, after the whole covid debacle.
It would almost seem prudent to have at least a 5 man shop in Spain that made a few guns a month just to protect your patent.
The best gun for Spanish Inquisition :P (that would be unexpcected turn of events for everyone).
Built like a tank. Just needs a little lockwork.
Is the name of the second company "Orbea"? Like the bike company?
Not like, the same.
It also happened with Beistegui Hermanos, they started making guns and then became BH, another well reputed bicycle makers.
That stock cut would accept a split tenon, locked open by a thumbscrew. Just a suggestion.
Whats that?
That's a way to lock a stock onto that pistol. Never seen it done that way, but the idea occurred to me.
Oh yeah i just thought about it and that could totally be viable. Makes sence when theres no other cutout or screw on the gun itself like other stocked pistols. Cant say ive ever seen a revolver with a shoulder stock though. I was half asleep when i watched this earlier and commented lol
4:35 how the hell is Ian’s Spanish pronunciation so good for like 10 seconds while his French is dumpster fire trash for the years and years he’s studied French arms.
Ian lives in Arizona and probably hears Spanish spoken every day.
Because the french decided not to pronounce any of the letters correctly to spite the Romans
Watching!
Cheers
Before I scroll down, how many My Charola jokes are going to appear?
Like m-m-m-my charola? 😆
I actually have a Merwin & Hulbert revolver but it's nonfunctional sadly
Which model? Someone needs to get ahold of a 3rd model Pocket Army and get measurements from it for Thingiverse...
@@nunyabidniz2868 I’ll have to look at it more closely later but I believe it’s in 32 s&w.
Благодарю вас за вашу работу, комментарий в поддержку
ARES has a picture of the air rifle
That’s a whacky unloading mechanism…
…
…
…
…
!!!
The words on the cannon, the "sistema merwin renombrado y privilegiado" means that is renowned and a privilege to use.
They're trying to sell you the gun on the gun Itself 🤣
1:10 Spain protecting its national industry ? .This must be the far away past .
Dun-a-dun-a-dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, Dun-a-dun-a-dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
My Charola!
Did Spanish companies ever to license their designs to others? Like the Star pistols, they are copies of Brownings but with some genuine improvements. I imagine Browning and FN would have stopped such a move.
Since most of what Spain manufactured was unlicensed copies, there was no incentive to enforce foreign patents. If Spain had turned out their own designs, other countries would have retaliated by refusing to enforce Spanish patents, and likely forced Spain to honor theirs..
Just here to thank Mike Carrick.
M-m-m-my Charola!
Hey! You can't steal what we've stolen! I'm suing!
So now i know how to say "I made this" in Spanish.
This patent system should be on every country!
Not really how it works these days though. With the rise of fairly cheap transportation, large expensive factories and the small relative size of many (particularly european) countries there's plenty of countries that import the products for sale even if a branch of the company exists in that country. Changing laws to something like this would be a good way to get larger companies to just ignore your country as not worth their time anymore. While that might be ok for smaller volume easier to produce items like firearms it becomes a real concern for things like cars. China is kinda in this boat atm and they're only really even managing to continue interesting companies due to the sheer size of the market and even then there's a lot of them that have pulled out over the years (Google) due to how badly China treats foreign companies. Companies with smaller markets would just ruin themselves trying something similar. It might be one thing if that was a worldwide norm, but the first few through that gate would be in a lot of trouble from the global market. So much trouble it would likely discourage anyone else from following down that path.
There's also a lot of reciprocal respect involved in that too between countries. If you're going to target and damage foreign companies then why should those foreign countries respect your companies? Again China is a great example of this (although not quite so cut and dry) of Chinese companies being blacklisted in places like the US and the EU.
Makes it kinda obvious where outfits like Llama got their heritage... copy the work of others who actually do the R&D, and make semi-passable clones of their firearms.
“ You have to get your own handguns officers and we recommend this one ! “ Sheesh, u can jump off this cliff but u have to jump from here ! 🤔😳
It could be worse.
To be an officer in the Imperial German Army, pre 1914, you had to have a private income.
Until you were, at least, a general your salary wouldn't cover your living expenses.
At last, a motive for the Spanish-American War.
hahahhahah 😂
Cool.
Has nothing to do with this firearm but please do some content. Or your thoughts and opinions on 3d printed guns.
Improvement? Different cartridge and grip design.
the translation to spanish of "Merwin and Hulbert" is "Anitua y Charola a todo gas"
I’m trying to look for a revolver as my first handgun any suggestions people
Any .44 mag lol
Gp100. They don’t die, and (I’ll assume you’re into .357/10mm) with specials they don’t recoil
Smith and Wesson makes nice revolvers for a relatively good price.
smith and wesson airweight 357. Thank me later
Smith and Wesson model 66.
Small enough to carry, big enough to soak up recoil, classic looks, it's the Glock 19 of revolvers but better looking.
That Eyebrow hair... or whisker
Seeing as patent laws were supoosed to protect the manufacturer and allow them to profit off their design, if they arent profiting from it in a particular country then there's very few arguements against Spain's methods at the time.
That would seem to be a stronger argument for a country not enforcing patents when a product wasn't offered for sale there at all. But Spain didn't care whether or not it was offered for sale there, only where it was manufactured.
If your imported gun was the best selling one in Spain you still wouldn't get any patent protection.
I own one, but don't have nothing written, no proof marks! So I don't know if is a copy or is original, it shoots .38cal bullets! The handles is in white madrepérola and the gun is all níquel finished!
Tough Cookies
I wonder, if any inventors or companies did patent their systems in Spain, then had like, a guy, in a shed, making a gun or two, just so they could point to that and, say, hey, we have the patent, and are manufacturing guns in Spain, should they feel the need to stop a Spanish manufacturer from knocking off their stuff.
I hope Ian does doesn’t drop a book on this pistol.
Welcome of the world of Spanish Copies XD
Also if you like Beatles or Rolling Stones we have our own copies of they too.
XD We had some years were we copied almost all.
5:13
''Reformado'' means ''reformed or remodeled'' and ''privilegiado'' means that something or someone is high class. I suppose they were trying to say that this model was better than the original one.
No really, "privilegiado" is just "outstanding"
@@milybanily Here "privilegiado" means "having been granted a privilege", a legal "privilege of invention"; a patent. Ian's hunch was correct.
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo here's interaction for you.
This would be cooler if it was chambered in .32 French Longue
i think it would be even cooler if it was chambered in 13.37 random
@@Axonteer Or perhaps the very early anti-materiel ".69-420 Nice".
Pls try indonesian ss2 assault riffle im indonesian and also fan of this channel hehe
Could a spanish company export something that they copied someone else patent? Could that gun be exported under Spanish patent
They could try it, but I don't think it would work out well.
All that patent law does is protect the Spanish companies.
Could they export a copy? Yes, and they did, to China in the 1920s/30s with the same law. And to France in WW1.
But the Spanish patent law really doesn't matter there because it only affects Spain, not the buyers elsewhere
Wasnt sure ifnit opened them up to original patent holder if they tried to sell in a country that supports original patent
@@2fwelding842 i think it would. Company in Spain makes a copy, sells in, say, Germany. Original was patented in Germany. Original sues Spanish company in Germany for patent infringement.
Nobody expects this Spanish imposition!
Extra steps there to unload, just not efficient...
ive seen a russian copy made at tula arms in .44 russian
And they were (probably) used in world war 1 by the French when war were declared!
*pew, pachoo, wurrwurrwurr, dancing guys*