EC I hear ya but I just don't see the big crime...Both brands "copied" a lot of technology that preceded them. Aesthetically yes Bugera did a very nice job of copying the layout...hell they may very well be made in the same factory in China...For sure many of the parts are made at the same factory / factories that supply the electronic parts.
I used to be a tile setter. If you wanted a Tomco tile job you had to use me and pay me what I expected. There was no haggling and you got a Tomco job which was a tile job done right from beginning to end.
That works fine on a onesy twosy kind of business and provided me with a decent living...The only way I could make more money was to duplicate myself and that was the rub. Try as I might I couldn't find another Tomco that would work for me. Guys of my level didn't need to work for me they could get jobs on their own.
If too many of them had shown up in my area ( that didn't happen ) I would become a commodity and the prices would slowly start going down.
We live in a very strange time in history with all the luxuries we enjoy but certainly don't "need" to survive...We are a society of consumers buying all kinds of shit not necessary to exist. Like guitar amps
When I hear people talk about manufacturing who have never owned or tried to start a manufacturing business, I hear all kinds of lofty socialist ideas of how that business should be run...Excellent pay, free medical, 4 day work week, maternity time for both males and females the list goes on and on.... But those damn consumers they are a demanding lot and they want the best value for the lowest price they can buy it at. The two philosophies don't mesh and never will. One is pie in the sky and one is real human nature. Feed me, Shelter me, Entertain me and do it in a fashion where I have to put out as little effort and money as possible.
Trading goes back to our early cave ancestors. Capitalism is just a modern day version of the same thing. Nanook has a rock I like and I have a bone Nanook would like to possess. He doesn't care how I got the bone, nor I, how he got the rock. We trade we're happy...till I find out I could have gotten two rocks for my bone..dang!
Now we use money to trade for the rocks and bones and though we all would like to say we have ethics and standards...... we're really no better than our ancestors...Just trying to get along with what we need and what we feel we'd like to have.
Not just iPhones... all phones have blood sweat and tears attached to them...That T-shirt you wear, the shoes you walk in, even that cup of Starbucks coffee has the fingerprint of used and abused laborers on it somewhere down the line..
Life in nature is a beautiful and yet brutal thing.......Life in our man made "civilization" is a beautiful yet brutal thing..... That's life..... I don't know the exact ratio worldwide in regards to quality of life today (Them's that have and thems that don't) but I suspect the ratio of have's is higher today than it was 100 years ago, 1000 years ago and certainly 2000 years ago....Sadly we are still living in a world where food is thrown away in one place while people are starving in another...Really bogus stuff going on people killing people, governments wanting to overthrow governments...Trump wanting to fire the NFL....... in the big picture Bugera copying Blackstar is pretty insignificant...