Many people have spoken up and said they respected Fortress' decision, I believe others have left the thread not wanting to go against an established member.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only time a legit integrator stole a quote out of how many ID's, home owners or trunk slammers who attempt to order stolen quotes.

If you look at the way this company is shielding their dealers from the things that this forum constantly complains about, they come out looking fine. I'm sure they'll be picking up business off of this.

Keep in mind what started this ball rolling, Terrmul tried to order a stolen quote. Who wouldn't want to be shielded from that?

"It is a completely different matter when the designer (of an event, a prop or a unique piece of equipment) has not authorized this “sharing”. If you copy something exactly, without permission, that is stealing. Adopt it and adapt it."

[Link: 24hrco.com]

Here's another written by a lawyer in 07

If you are not going to patent your ideas, which could be impossible, impracticable and costly, what can you do? The law of trade secrets may offer a useful alternative. In order for the confidential or proprietary information that you have and/or wish to include in your proposal to qualify as a trade secret, there are two criteria to be met. First, don't worry, the information does not have to be anything unusual or "eye poppingly" original. Instead, it is the kind of information that you have accumulated, discovered, developed or generated in the course of operating your business, that is not generally known and gives you a competitive edge. Second, you must take reasonable steps to preserve the secrecy of the information.

In an attempt to help FortressSeating, since they don't seem to be doing it themselves, I've drafted a response for them to post :D.

"While my intentions were good, in retrospect I realize we should have handled it much differently. We're implementing a new policy because of this experience, and going forward all communications with existing dealers and potential dealers will be considered confidential to that dealer. I apologize and assure all our dealers and potential dealers that this situation won"t be repeated."

Hmmm.
1. "Information generally not known that gives you a competitive edge."
2. "Reasonable steps to preserve the secrecy of that information".

Are you feeling silly yet?

You are either completely delusional or a total fanboy....but most ID's have more pull with a furniture company than an AV company would ever. You keep claiming he stole the quote when in fact the ID handed it to him and said this is what she wants. Terrmul has no reason to suspect that he was "stealing" the quote from someone else. I'm guessing the quote did not have the competitors info on it so how would he know??? Quit trying to keep this going! It's over and everyone has had their say.

The truth is that Terrmul was handed a furniture request and was hoping to become a dealer to fulfill the request. If it was handled better by Fortres than this would have turned out differently. Is it unethical? Probably not. Should they have asked Terrmul to partner up with the company he was "stealing" the chair order? Yes and if this was handled better, Terrmul could have charged MSRP and made the 5% the order was discounted, and the other local dealer could have still made the same profit they ended up with. I'm sure he would have been happy with $2000 and might have found a relationship with a competitor while keeping his client. I see Terrmuls point in that he doesn't want to lose a good customer he has built a 7 year relationship with. After the job is finished, maybe he would have decided Fortres is the cats a#$ and could have used his experience with their product to continue a future relationship and potential dealer account.

The part I find strange is that they had him fill out a new dealer form and then decided against it. The timeline of this seems a little off to me. Terrmul never mentions that they said no to his dealer request and yet Fortres mentions they denied him. I simple search of his area would have brought up the fact their is a good partner already present. Would they have changed their mind if his company was bigger???


Classic!

He had information in the quote only known to dealers, that is certainly generally not known and gives him a competitive edge.

Reasonable steps to preserve the secrecy? He gave it to the client, whats he supposed to do, make it self destruct? I guess that's why there's court.

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This guy's delusional too, he says he's had ID's try to open accounts on many occasions and fortress contacted him. The issue is the stolen quote, it sounds like they don't do business like that. If Terrmul had designed his own quote he may not be in this position.
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[Link: elcom.pub.ro]

If arguing whether giving a proposal to a client gives reasonable expectation of your intellectual property not being stolen is all I had to stand on I would not be calling another companies ethics into question over a deal that went bad.

Good luck finding and quoting that "info that was not available on the website". At some point you let your assumption become reality.

No one who was actually involved (the op, cmont and fortress) has posted anything proving that the OP stole anything or that the ID presented the OP with anything other than the model numbers on the fortress website. In your last posted you mention "a 5 seater". Seems like you haven't visited the Fortress website. They have a few more details than the number of chairs you can gang together.

You are the one making dumb ass assumptions...as usual. I feel sorry for you.



Thanks for making my point for me. You and several others made incorrect assumptions too early in the thread. This is typical for you but i was surprised by the others. Either way you wrong. At least you finally admit it.

Or it might have been part of a global conspiracy hatched by the OP to steal the seating sale in a theater he was providing.

Techvalley, I haven't seen posts by you on a regular basis, but this one you can't let go. What's your deal? Are you also with the company that provided the original quote?

2. We get contacted by Turrml (who is not a Fortress dealer) and he requests a quote and names the exact specification that our dealer has been working on, even names the leather color. We don't have our leather choices online, so the only way he has this information is if someone has given it to him.

Page 4, post 1

Thank you for another example of people making assumptions in this thread.

"exact specification". Still waiting for them to define that one. You go ahead and stick with your assumptions that this was a proper fully filled out quote. I will go ahead and wait for the actual information to show up. On page 4 this was my response that FYI never got addressed by fortress. Using your earlier logic about keeping quiet i guess they have something to hide? (or maybe they are just busy like i stated about the OP when you said that)


And thanks for this added bonus:

"unless someone has given it to him" <--- The manufacturer actually admitted that they know someone else gave him this quote meaning he didn't steal it.

No, I really don't know why I keep posting. I wanted to start contributing more to the forum instead of lurking and I got sucked into this. I really shouldn't be arguing.