Rana,
I appreciate your time earlier today on the phone concerning our product approval, as well as our issue concerning another company and their blatant use of our original drawings for their own use during their product approval process. I know that you and I spoke at great length earlier, but since a number of others are also receiving this email, I will do my best to explain the situation again. It would be helpful to print out the attached document in color in order to follow along with the information detailed below. We appreciate everyone’s concerns and response to this matter and hope that something is done to not only rectify this situation, but also to make sure that this type of disregard to the approval process doesn’t happen again, the integrity and standards of the Florida code are upheld, and that those who decide to cut corners are not allowed to gain benefits from those who follow the guidelines and rules.
We are a door and window manufacturer out of Black Rock, AR. We discovered recently as we were getting our information re-certified and updated with the help of Building Drops and NAMI, that a competitor of ours had cut/paste our original drawings that were created by Building Drops in 2009 and used them as their own drawings for submittal during their approval process. Or FL # in question is FL12820. The company that stole our drawings is Pocahontas Aluminum Co. and their FL# is FL12903-R1. If you will look at the attached documents at the red letters “A” and “B”. You can clearly see that they are the same drawings. In the drawings, red letter “A”, Pocahontas Aluminum has removed four circles with connecting arrows that include a number and a letter that are used on our drawing that corresponds to cross sections drawings of our door on page 3 of our submitted information. They removed these because as you can see, they had no additional pages to their drawing. If you would now look at the read letter “C”. You will notice that Pocahontas Aluminum did in fact try and change the width on “their” drawing to reflect the size door they were submitting, but if you look hard, you can tell that the font style and size of the text “38.5”” is different from the rest of the text it is next to, as if they used white-out and then typed over their dimensions. Furthermore, you will also see that in our drawing, which is the original, our door is drawn to scale (62.5” wide x 82.5” tall). The door drawing they submitted (which is the exact same scale as ours, because it is ours), only measures 38.5” wide x 82.50” wide. Please now look at the two red letter “D”’s. We do not contend that the drawing to the left, nor the text at the top is ours. But we would like to point out that the image, as well as the text next to it and the text at the top is perfectly clear and perfectly visible. Now compare this to the two stolen drawings (red letter A and B). These drawings are hazy and unclear. Exactly what you would expect from a copy. And not a very good copy. It’s as if they printed them and then used a copy machine to make their document, these drawings were not even produced on a computer. To illustrate this theory even more, if you look closely above the red letter “F”, you will see a faint line running between the image on the bottom left (red “D”) and the stolen image on the bottom right (red “B”). The only conclusion is that one image was laid down onto the other and then copied on a copy machine. There is no doubt that Pocahontas Aluminum got on your website, took our image, and pawned it off as their own. But after I spoke to you, we decided to go and look at one of their actual doors, because it got us thinking. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
There is a portable building sales lot a few miles from our location that sells buildings with Pocahontas Aluminum’s doors on them. We went and measured the doors on them to see if the measurements of their doors matched what they submitted to their engineer to sign off on and what they ultimately submitted to you for approval was accurate and matched what is listed on the drawings. Please see the BLUE LETTER A. The dimensions we have listed on our drawing and they have listed on “their” drawing are identical. The problem is, their door configuration isn’t made this way, ONLY OURS IS. They allow 4.5” between their hinges. We allow 6”. They missed this detail when they submitted “their” drawing or thought no one would catch it. So in other words, they submitted drawings for a product that doesn’t match the product they received approval for and have also been selling this product in the state of Florida for years. They have been doing so using an approval process that they knew was tainted because they new they stole our drawing. This is not just unethical, but it is unjust and something should be down. We looked back and we paid Building Drops a little under $11,000.00 in 2009 to help us with our approval. For them to have the right to knowingly circumvent the system, knowingly lie to those they requested approval from, and profit from it is inexcusable.
I hope I have explained this situation sufficiently and clearly and that this matter is dealt with appropriately. I look forward to your response and to what you consider is an appropriate course of action to resolve this in a timely manner.
Have a great and blessed day.
Ryan Cernosek
Sales
Manager/Marketing
Eagan
Manufacturing, Inc.
PO
Box 620
602
Eagan Road
Black
Rock, AR 72415
PH:
870-878-6805
FX:
870-878-6280
Cell:
870-378-2772