In reply to Stefan Jacobsen:
Alien Priority date for the trigger mechanism was late in 1987 and a little over a year later for the internal spring mechanism, so it would expire 20 years later that, so you are right, the patents had just expired. That said I distinctly remembermy buddy who used to distribute for Dave Waggoner in the UK telling that things got very weird late on in CCH. First there was the recall in I think 2006, then apparently Dave married a russian (mail order?) bride, 2007, then he died in 2009. He told me that she then somehow managed to sell the rights to two seperate spanish companies - whether this was in any way legal I don't know, but Fixe clearly got the rights to the name. Or whether that even happened I'm not 100% sure, all I know was there were schenanigans. But Fixe then took a long time to bring them to market, whereas Totem Basics were out in pretty short order...