[dvnr] Norton Owner Club - legal threat from ANIL

[Tom Banks]

Hello, everyone. 
I thought it in everyone’s interest to post this letter from a certain Mr Seifert, Director of Andover Norton, that Mr John Healy posted today in the Norton forum page at www.britbike.com <http://www.britbike.com/> 
and now we have another side of The Story. 
Cheers!
Tom Banks

Re: NOC "An important Announcement"
Drawings held by the NOC
Those of our customers who are members of the English “Norton Owners Club” (“NOC”) may have seen “An important Announcement” by the NOC’s chairman, Tim Harrison, in the club’s magazine “Roadholder”.
From the “Announcement” you may have gotten the impression that Andover Norton (“AN”) has, out of the blue, attacked the NOC with lawyers to get hold of drawings the NOC reputedly bought from Joe Francis Motors in 1991.
It is beneficial for the understanding of the situation to have all the facts, not just the careful selection of them given by Harrison.
In May, 2015, Andover Norton acquired, in the asset sale of Mick Hemmings Motorcycles, casting equipment for Dominator cylinder barrels. We subsequently found that the party that had machined the barrels for the Hemmings declined to give us the computer programmes and jigs the Hemmings had paid this party for. After several months of fruitless discussions we terminated all dealings with that party and looked elsewhere for drawings.
As an NOC member for forty years I knew about a stack of drawings the NOC had. We also happened to have a list of about a third of these drawings and, from this list, knew the drawings we needed to do the barrels were amongst them.
I therefore approached Tim Harrison, chairman of the NOC, at our Open Day in July 2016(!) about a copy of the relevant drawings. He claimed this needed to be decided by the NOC committee. Though I did enquire again and again nothing came off it. So on 23rd March, 2017, our lawyers wrote formally to the NOC. Following this I was approached by committee members who talked me into speaking eye-to-eye instead of through lawyers. I, foolishly I must now say, agreed.
In the following months a lot of email exchanges and talks took place during which a never-ending number of excuses were given why we could not have the drawings immediately, and the decision was postponed endlessly. There was always that “next committee meeting next month” where a conclusion was promised to be made, but it never was.
Researching the matter in the meantime I spoke to many people who played a role in the club at the time the drawings were bought, and also looked into the legal background of the copyright of the drawings. It became crystal clear the copyright was the property of Andover Norton, who had first bought the pre-Rotary Norton Spares Business from Norton Motors in 1991 and were irrevocably assigned the intellectual property on all Norton twin parts pre-2002 in a license agreement with Norton America LLC, to date the holder of the Norton trademarks, in 2003. Copies of these agreements were consequently supplied to the NOC committee.
I tried to make the committee see reason one last time in May 2018, flying in from Munich especially to meet committee members Tim Harrison and Peter White in Andover. We agreed on a deal that gave enough benefit for the NOC for Tim Harrison to “sell” it to the few reluctant members on the committee. My proposal encompassed a lot more than just a sum of money (5.000 Pounds) as claimed in the NOC notes. It offered the NOC, who had not made use of the drawings for over a quarter of a century, our assistance in manufacturing spares, be it the manufacture of forgings, castings, or getting parts machined or fabricated.
They could make any single parts they wished.
On twin parts, either we would make them if we were interested, or the NOC could make with our permission parts of no commercial interest to AN, or we would make a joint effort to manufacture.
Again, a decision could not be reached by the committee, so, at the “International Rallye” in Austria on 18th/19th August 2018 Tim Harrison and I discussed the matter yet again. The impression I got was that he suggested we should put legal pressure on the NOC to get the committee to reach a decision because he himself felt unable to.
Which is what we did after over two years of being polite and reasonable with a club committee that hindered us to manufacture non-available spare parts for the benefit of their members, something the NOC had not managed to do with the drawings they wrongly thought were theirs to do so for 27 years.
The offering of the drawings we needed that Tim Harrison cites in his “Important Announcement” came on 9th September 2018, only after our lawyers had challenged the NOC. That is over two years after asking him and the NOC for help to make a non-available part from our own IP.
What everybody needs to realise is that we have the interests of ALL Norton owners, whether they are members of the NOC and/or customers of Andover Norton, directly or through other sources, at heart. The idea is to keep Nortons, all Nortons, on the road for as long as people wish to proudly ride them. And to extend the range of parts available to Norton owners.
AN are in the best position to do the latter as they already have the expertise, the experience, the procedures, the product liability insurance and the facilities. NOC, Limited or not, do not have any of these things and are in no position to arrange the manufacture of quality-assured parts.

I let my NOC membership of forty years lapse because I could not continue to support a club that acts against the interests not only of its own members, but of all Norton owners worldwide.

Please form your own opinion.

Joe Seifert, Director, Andover Norton
December 2018




> On Jan 10, 2019, at 2:13 PM, Norum,Robert A. via DVNR <dvnr at casano.com> wrote:
> 
> From the NOC website - interesting and bizarre.
> 
> Keep the rubber side down.
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> 2019 - From Tim Harrison
> I am bringing to your attention recent events which have potentially serious implications for our club. The issues revolve around a legal threat from Andover Norton International Limited (ANIL) and the framework under which we are organisationally established.
> The NOC was set up in 1959 by a group of enthusiasts at a meeting in Eric Oliver's Motorcycle shop. A set of rules and constitution were written and have been built upon over the decades since. We are what is known as an 'unincorporated body'. In effect, this means that the sole liability for the club rests with the members of the Executive Committee at the time. This has worked well in the past and encourages a friendly and co-operative way of running the club.
> 
> In 1991, the NOC purchased a significant number of blueprints of Norton factory drawings from Joe Francis, a motorcycle dealer in South London. We have, since that time, kept the drawings safely and made one electronic copy because the condition of the paper drawings was deteriorating with age.
> The club initially received a request for certain drawings from ANIL. The Executive Committee was concerned that we should be even handed in our approach to suppliers and we were also considering commissioning the manufacture of the relevant parts ourselves.
> 
> Members will be aware the club is under considerable pressure to get 'hard to come by' spares made. The drawings requested were not handed over to ANIL, although they were subsequently offered and declined.
> 
> ANIL made claims to all of the drawings, the copyright and intellectual property rights, thereby challenging our right to own, copy or make parts from the drawings. The Club believes that our ownership of the drawings is clear. We are not in a position to know who owns the copyright and the intellectual property rights. We are advised that UK and European law entitles us to make parts but we do not, and have never stated, that the parts we commission are original or sold under the 'Norton' name.
> 
> The Club has received solicitors' letters from two firms acting on behalf of ANIL,both of which threaten the Club with legal action. The normal possibilities would be to settle by agreement or to fight in Court. Our problem is that as an unincorporated body, any claim is against named members of the entire Executive Committee. They are therefore the only people who can reach a settlement and, quite frankly, this will be difficult to achieve. ANIL has offered an agreement which requires undertakings and commitments that in the future, the signatories may not be in a position to enforce. This leads to the issue of how we can best protect the current and future EC members and limit the liability of the Club.
> 
> Following research and taking advice, the Executive Committee has concluded that the only way forward is to convert the Norton Owners Club into a limited liaibility trust or company. Accordingly, the Executive Committee will be submitting a formal proposal at the next AGM. It will not be the intention to remove any aspects of the Club's democracy. The NOC Constitution will be incorporated into the Articles of the new organisation; members should not notice any difference.
> 
> The Executive Committee will be making the proposal purely to protect it's officers and their personal assets from the threat of legal action. There is absolutely no intention to change the club in any other way.
> 
> We hope to be able to reach agreement with Andover Norton but this will require give and take and their recognition that we are, and wish to remain, a Club serving our members, not a commercial competitor.
> 
> Tim Harrison
> Chairman
> 
> 
> NOTICE:  This e-mail message, including any attachments and appended messages, is for the sole use of the intended recipients and may contain confidential and legally privileged information.
> If you are not the intended recipient, any review, dissemination, distribution, copying, storage or other use of all or any portion of this message is strictly prohibited.
> If you received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and delete this message in its entirety.
> _______________________________________________
> DVNR mailing list
> DVNR at mail.casano.com
> https://mailman.dudley.nu/mailman/listinfo/dvnr
> UNSUBSCRIBE: mail to DVNR-unsubscribe at mail.casano.com