… when they pry it from my cold dead hands:
Russia says it suffers major losses from the counterfeit manufacture of Kalashnikov assault rifles in Bulgaria. The armies of 47 countries use the AK-47 assault rifle, known as the Kalashnikov after its designer, Mikhail Kalashnikov.
About 100 million AK-47s and modified versions are believed to circulate around the world, but many of them are produced illegally.
Bulgaria’s Arsenal, whose license to produce Kalashnikov rifles expired a long time ago, displayed a wide range of counterfeit rifles at the DSA 2006 arms show in Malaysia.
Ivanov said earlier that the annual sales of unlicensed small arms on the international market totaled about $2 billion, with counterfeit Kalashnikov assault rifles accounting for 80-90% of the volume.
They are demanding a halt to all “illegal” AK-47 manufacturing. I suspect this won’t have much impact. I think the Russians are just enjoying being uppity these days. The article concludes we haven’t signed any intellectual property agreements with Russia.
via Slashdot
Well, since these counterfeits are being manfactured in Eastern European countries, Russia should consider them reparations for the time those countries spent being ruled under communism…
Apparently, the AK-47 was patented in 1999….