Have Fox Fibre items here in Spain. The towels are lovely & plush. Socks are OK, but the rest of the clothing range needs an infusion of style. The underwear is particularly frightening.

There's still a big market gap for stylish fashion (in the 'timeless' sense) from sustainably grown & processed fabrics. There is growing activity in this area, typically focused on T-shirts (followed by sports wear & baby clothes). Where broader ranges are available on-line or in catalogues, the presentation is usually poor enough to stifle sales. I look forward to someone achieving the right combination of fabrics, style & cut, range and promotion (no small undertaking) without Katharine Hemnett designer price tags, then it will be worldchanging.

That FoxFiber ( http://www.foxfibre.com/ ) is patented makes it more harm than good, IMO, because keeping someone else from patenting it only requires prior art. It's worse than a bad faith gesture to actually patent something, and as for notoriety as its creator, Sally Fox ( http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/fox.html ) needn't rely on punishing ppl with "too similar" products for her bread-and-butter and/or recovery of development cost.

BTW, I'm not affiliated with any competitor of hers or anything and don't have an axe to grind against her personally, or anything, besides that I think its wrong and dumb to patent stuff and no less so for her to.

You'd think so-called greens who patent stuff were competing against the big corporate interests whose sole interest in anything more responsible than what they've been doing the past many decades is PR greenwashing! All this supposedly to regain R&D when consumers and innovators wouldn't have a problem coming together if every participant weren't angling for a personal living out of it. How can you call yourself a green -- and get away with it -- when it's about a personal living rather than a healthier you, us, and planet?

One last practical bit about (not!) patenting: rather than spend the money up front to patent, why not wait until some bozo tries to lock it up under proprietary ownership before brandishing your prior art? By all means spend the money to document and publish, etc., your prior *art* up front, but that's way cheaper than a patent, even *combined* with the cost of defeating one later. Not to mention the fact you'd probably have oodles of financial support from others in your industry. And an outpouring of good PR from consumers. Defend free innovation and life, not the free market.

Despite the techicalities of the patents, what type of socks to you choose to wear, and why?