On Jan 14, 2008 4:16 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@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