On Jan 14, 2008 4:16 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
A lot of plastic model makers dropped parts of their
product lines (of
cars, aircraft, etc) after IP claims similar to this were made against
them.
I diagree with all this, but IP law seems to be headed there.
A similar thing happened in model railroading when Union Pacific
decided to throw over a century of precedent in the trash and decide
that not only could it claim that models with its current name,
insignia, paint scheme etc. were trademark-infringing - even though it
had allowed such models to be made for pretty much the entire history
of the company - but also that historical versions of such that were
no longer used in trade were also going to be treated as infringing,
and furthermore that the name, marks and insignia of every railroad
the Union Pacific had ever purchased, taken over, or merged with and
subsumed were also in that category, even though the company had
discarded such names and trademarks as quickly as they could,
replacing them with their own paint, names and logos.
Of course, they then went ahead and decided to paint a bunch of new
locomotives in 'commemorative historic schemes of railroads now part
of Union Pacific', and the cynical view is that this was done
precisely to establish a better claim to those marks as being in
current use.
Pretty much all the manufacturers went along with it, too, with a few
notable exceptions; I'm not sure what happened in court with those
(probably came to a confidential settlement).
Bullying big companies with lawyers are killing good parts of fair use
and the reasonable traditional limits on trademarks' scope.
-Matt