One of my favorite posts of yours Tom. Agree w/ every word of this. Even though I kind of suspect I'm coming at this thing from a different ideological point of view than yours, I think you've got it pegged.
I'd add the usual addendum about how we should all be talking fishing instead. EBSs on the SBR and so forth. But just happy to see any action on this site which I thought had finally bought the farm.
I think Tom is a mad genius.
He is consistently right while being 100% wrong.
But this is far from his greatest moment.
While I don't believe Tom is the inventor of the cased caddis, from what I understand he considered litigation against fly tier magazine for misappropriating his pattern. The case turned on intricate questions of intellectual property law, such as whether or not fly patterns should be protected by the U.S. Patent Office.
("Can I sue for patent infringement, if I don't have a patent?")
"Tom's intellectual property" - an interesting concept to consider, say, as a metaphysical/existential possibility - doesn't seem particularly valuable... But he vigorously made his case.
Pun intended.
Tom's case was not judged strong enough to proceed to court, by his team of legal advisors - here on NEFF.
But he credibly argued that he discovered the cased caddis natural, and that no other tier had seen it but him. While flies are imitations of naturals, he suggested that the magazine writers discovered the pattern from a post of his on NEFF, and had imitated his pattern from pictures he posted here, and not from naturals on the river.