People MISELLING reptiles

[sparkle]

has anyonme noticed recently the desperate need for reptile sellers to sell their animals as different or "more" than what they are

I know that with the beardie sellers it seems to be increasing tenfold this year

I see the phrases sandfire, citrus and bloodred banded about as if they mean nothing when in fact they are registred trademarks of large breeders in america

Now i know I can be mouthy and opinionated but this doesnt seem to be allowed to happen with leos and other reps..

people are quick to correct the seller and the seller normally says OOPS..

but although were not meant to post ont he classifieds section unless were interested in buying does that mean when something is blatantly a misleading post we should leave it...

just wondered what everyone else thought..

some people are actualyl buying wrongly named beardies thinking they are getting morphs.. and yes that might be a tad silly... thinking you are getting a morph for 20 pounds... but its also miselling..


just wondered what others thought...

[Athravan]

Deliberately mis-selling is in effect, lying, or scamming. It's forcing someone to pay for something that they think they are getting, but are in fact not getting. If it is done with the full awareness of the seller in order to increase sellability or profits then it is nothing short of a scam in my eyes.

Of course people will argue that you can label anything a "citrus" colour if it shows some yellow, and there is no law against doing so, although it certainly can be misleading and buyers need to be very careful.

But if for example, you are advertising something as "het albino" if you know for a fact it is not het albino, then that is most definitely a scam and happens a lot more than people realise

[Mason]

LMFAO @ registered trademark


it is cack and wrong. but trademark no.

People need to be aware of what they are buying, if people did more than 30 seconds of research they'd know what a pastel royal, bloodred eardie etc etc shouold look like and sell for. I'm not saying it's ok, it's not, but it will always happen and always has. With reptiles and everything else. It's a case of buyer beware. Always has been and always will be. Unfortunately we will never live in a wolrd with no unscrupulous sellers.

[sparkle]

so what is the correct legal term for trademarking of something..

liek bell albino or VPI xanthic..

fire and ice citrus..

i thought trademark was the correct wording ... if im wrong i appologise and maybe u can corect me...

Tis the only way to learn mason... make mistakes.. be corrected..


now u see if im wrong about something whether it be the price of cheese.. morphs or anything else i dont mind if people want to correct me in an arrogant way.. a put down way.. or a nice way.. as long as i learn and know more im happy .. whereas u correct some people on here and they have a hairy fit.. especially if its about locality of snakes.. morphs or worth of animals


so yeah correct me when im wrong.. and i can learn...and thats with anything in life..

[Emmaj]

Originally Posted by sparkle

so what is the correct legal term for trademarking of something..

liek bell albino or VPI xanthic..

fire and ice citrus..

i thought trademark was the correct wording ... if im wrong i appologise and maybe u can corect me...

Tis the only way to learn mason... make mistakes.. be corrected..


now u see if im wrong about something whether it be the price of cheese.. morphs or anything else i dont mind if people want to correct me in an arrogant way.. a put down way.. or a nice way.. as long as i learn and know more im happy .. whereas u correct some people on here and they have a hairy fit.. especially if its about locality of snakes.. morphs or worth of animals


so yeah correct me when im wrong.. and i can learn...and thats with anything in life..

awww sparkle hun i love reading your posts they always make me smile

[sparkle]

Originally Posted by Emmaj

awww sparkle hun i love reading your posts they always make me smile

LOL really...


oh and by the way mason...

on this website at fire and ice... if u scroll down it says CITRUS trademark.. and the word citrus on some other pages has the wee marked symbol after it... so i dunno if thats wrong too then

Fire and Ice Dragons



so maybe thats where ive been misled.. if so i appologise and im happy for you to have corrected me tee-hee

[Emmaj]

Originally Posted by sparkle

LOL really...


oh and by the way mason...

on this website at fire and ice... if u scroll down it says CITRUS trademark.. and the word citrus on some other pages has the wee marked symbol after it... so i dunno if thats wrong too then

Fire and Ice Dragons



so maybe thats where ive been misled.. if so i appologise and im happy for you to have corrected me tee-hee

yeah really

[Renfield]

I also enjoy reading your posts some of them are funny, but most of them are imformative

Back to the thread, I'm looking for some more beardies and there are quite a few using the terminology mentioned above and I spend all my time wandering and wasting time in the classified section as some photos if there is any don't live up to the description.
So I think i'm giving up looking and buying them from abroad so I can get the paperwork to back up their parentage.

So it really is a case of buyer beware, I think

[Xavier]

Personally my only issue is if they label them as being from that breeder, the colours etc. are a completely different matter [in my eyes]. Someone can call their high colour yellow citrus if that's how they wish to label their morph, if they want to develop a "citrus" morph from their own stock, etc. "Trademark" can also mean something the breeder is known for producing, not just that the morph name is "trademarked", and from reading it I would of imagined only 100% Citrus would be trademarked, not just citrus. Otherwise there'd be a bit of an issue with other things that used citrus...

... it says "our trademark 100% citrus", isn't that a bit like sites that say "our trademark blue siamese", it's just something stated as a "we breed the best of these, they're known all over the world, it's what we're known for" and other such nice stuff i'm not eloquent enough to describe.

Sandfires ... i'd imagine this is a bit of a sticky issue as it's more unique than citrus, it's a combination of words that I doubt many people would automatically think of if they saw an orange/red beardie, but not many people are aware of the fact Sandfire is already coined, by a breeder with the name, it's horrendous and complicated and argh.

I have to rewrite the second half, because seemingly I noticed not when paragraphs are jumbled/eaten/mucked up through oversensitive touchpads ...

[HadesDragons]

I think the main issue is with using a breeder's name in conjunction with an animal, thus implying a connection between the breeder and the animal, where in actual fact no such connection exists. As far as I'm aware it's not possible for a breeder to copyright a morph, unless they created the genes (ie by genetic engineering) that cause the morph. Selectively breeding / discovering a chance mutation doesn't make you the owner of the gene; DNA splicing / recombination in a lab would do. Although to be honest if you had the ability / equipment / financial backing to be able to do that, I'm sure you would be doing far more important things than trying to create new bearded dragon genes...

What is commonly advertised as a "Sandfire" beardie looks like an exceedingly cheap knockoff of the original "Sandfire Red / Gold" dragons. As far as I'm aware, people contracted the morph name the "wrong" way - it went to being "Sandfire", rather than being "Red / Gold". Rumor has it that this started happening at reptile shows in the US - sellers with similarly-coloured dragons to the "Sandfire Red / Gold" decided that their dragons "must" be of the same morph, and called them that. It wasn't stamped out at the time, and continued to become common practice. Hell, it may even have been good for Sandfire back in the early days, as it would have gotten their name spread around. Ron Tremper is widely known as a leopard gecko breeder; some of this fame may be because one of the leopard gecko morphs (Tremper Albino) actually has his name attached to it. The difference between a "Sandfire (Red / Gold)" and a "Tremper (Albino)" is that one is subjective, and one can be proven out by breeding trials, which, for me at least, is the problem area.

Obviously this is detrimental to Sandfire (the breeder), as most people when they hear the word "Sandfire" now think of a normal dragon with some yellow colour, rather than the intensely coloured Red / Golds actually produced by Sandfire Dragon Ranch. This makes the Sandfire Ranch seem less "high-class" than it should be seen as, from a morph-quality perspective. A dragon that has two parents bred by the Sandfire Ranch shouldn't be advertised as "Sandfire" - it has two Sandfire parents, but has not gone through the raising process / quality control etc at the Ranch itself. It should be given the somewhat-less-catchy "tag" of "Offspring from two Sandfire (e.g. Red / Gold) parents", or simply "Red / Gold".



The main issue here (for me at least) isn't the actual morph names, but the use of breeder's names when the breeder has nothing to do with the animal. I heard a rumor that a seller in the UK was selling Blood Red dragons as "Fire and Ice Blood Reds", because the parents were from Fire and Ice. In this case, the morph is correct, but the "Fire and Ice" part isn't - the dragons were bred in the UK, not in Pennsylvania, so have nothing to do with Fire and Ice. Fire and Ice bred the parents, not the babies being advertised as "Fire and Ice Blood Reds". Obviously I don't know if this is true or not, so I'm not going to start naming names / speculating further. I won't be giving out details be PM either, so please don't ask for them. If you've heard the story, you've heard to story; if you haven't, you haven't.

To draw an analogy: It would be like me buying in car parts (genes in the parents) made by Mercedes (Fire and Ice), assembling them (breeding them), then selling the resulting "vehicle" (offspring) as a "Mercedes < insert model >" ("Fire and Ice < insert morph name >"). It's made from the same parts (genes), but hasn't been assembled (raised) to the same quality standards as Mercedes may use. You don't have the same reputation of quality, or aftercare etc. If it were to be advertised as being made from Mercedes parts (from Fire and Ice parents) that would be correct. To advertise it as a true Mercedes would not be, as they were not responsible for all of the steps of assembly / testing / quality control etc. It has the parts (genes) needed, so should still carry the "morph" tag; it's just the breeder's name that shouldn't be used. A baby that has parents from Fire and Ice is the "offspring of two bearded dragons from Fire and Ice". It is not a "Fire and Ice dragon".

Sandfire is the main problem area for this - the "name" of the "morph" that people seem to think is "Sandfire" has been in wide useage for some time now - personally I don't think it's going to go anywhere, as much as that bugs me to say. Generally speaking, a beardie sold as a "Sandfire" that's not from the Sandfire Ranch will be a beardie with slight yellow tinting (aka "Normal"...) and nothing more than that. Some people will accept advice you give them about how they should possibly label their animals; others insist on sticking to the name that they want to label their animal. I personally would say that people who continue to mislabel their animals after they've had reasons explained to them are not doing it out of ignorance; they are doing it out of deception. As Athravan said, once you remove ignorance, the seller is choosing to mislabel their animals; it becomes a scam of sorts.



Another "problem" area seems to be "German Giants". For starters no-one I've spoken to about them even really knows what they are - some say they are a larger, regional variant of P. vitticeps; some say that they are a hybrid of P. vitticeps and P. barbata. Their origins seem somewhat shrouded in mystery. Some say that they will grow to 24" / 30" / 36". The largest "German Giant" I've ever seen reliable photos of was just shy of 23" long. The largest non-"German Giant" I've ever seen reliable photos of was also just shy of 23" long. Go figure.

If a dragon's parents are only 18" long, then calling it a German Giant won't make the babies any larger; you would still expect them to average around 18"...



With such confusion, my advice to buyers is always to look at the parents. Calling a dragon "Sandfire" doesn't make it any more colourful than you would expect it to be based on the parents. Calling it "German Giant" doesn't make it any larger. Calling it "Snow" doesn't make it any whiter.

Base your expectations on the parents, and on the dragon itself, and not on what the seller tells you the parents are "called". Try asking the seller for a definition of whatever morph they are claiming it to be. If nothing else it will sometimes give you a cheap laugh as they fumble around in circles trying to explain how a normal dragon is something even more special than all beardies already are.


If you actually read through all of that and are still awake, I think you deserve recognition for it! Have a beer!


Andy