Example: Say there is someone I know that makes a great pitcher of tea, they add just the right amount of sugar and a little bit of lemon too. But the thing is, they use Lipton Tea to make that pitcher of tea.
Can they start bottling this tea, give it a new name and market it?
I mean, would anyone know it’s Lipton Tea being used, if so, how?
What are the laws (if any) regarding this?
Doesn’t nearly every manufacturer do this? Take someone else’s product and incorporate it into theirs. Do you think Lipton’s owns tea plantations? Well possible they do, but so what. There are companies that customize cars and then sell them and I don’t see how that differs.
Shouldn’t be a problem, unless you mention that it’s Lipton’s tea. Yeah, you do have first sale rights, but if you’re actually making a profit using Lipton’s trademark, you’re likely to be sued.
On the other hand, I had some trail mix not too long ago that included M&M’s, and it was listed as containing M&M’s on the front of the package. There was a disclaimer on the back indicating that the company wasn’t associated with the M&M producers, so maybe that’s enough.
I keep losing the link, but somewhere here on the SDMB there’s a discussion about some guy reselling Krispy Kremes.
I’m not sure if you can market a product that DOESN’T use somebody else’s product.
Repackaging happens all the time. You know those little bottles of LCD cleaner that are like $10 each. It’s probably just Windex or something similar.
Yeah. There are thousands of PC’s that are marked “Intel Inside” aren’t there?
Disregarding poop jokes, what do you think farmers do? I mean sure they use tools made by others, but their products don’t actually CONTAIN anything made by others… or hopefully not in significant amounts.
Incidentally, the term for producing the parts for finished products that you also produce yourself is “vertically integrated manufacturing.” e.g. you own the factory that makes the cloth, the factory where it’s sewn into T-shirts, the factory where the T-shirts are printed, and the store that sells the T-shirts.
Yeah, but those are licensing deals and whatnot. Granted, there are thousands of products on the market that wouldn’t be there without someone using another product. But I just meant in the sense of using a major manufacturers product and basically calling it your own. I mean hell, all you would be doing to the tea is adding sugar and reselling it already made/cooked. Who knows… thanks guys
>what do you think farmers do? I mean sure they use tools made by others, but their products don’t actually CONTAIN anything made by others
Yes, but “use” is the criterion. Maybe you could argue that commercial fishermen sell fish, and the fish themselves don’t use the net. But produce certainly used fertilizer, water pumped with electricity, insecticide, soil ploughed with a tractor, and so forth.
You can sell whatever you own. The tricky part is knowing what you own. When you buy the tea, you own it and whatever you make from it. You don’t own the name of the company (Lipton), so you can’t sell it (use it without permission in your advertising). You could sell food kits with teabags in them marked Lipton, you just couldn’t use the Lipton name in your advertising without permission. When you buy a music CD, you own the disk and the packaging, you don’t own the music on the disk. When you buy a book, you own the book, you don’t own the story. So it’s a very good question, asking what it is you actualy own when you buy something. Most people never think about it, but if you plan to sell something, you really do need to know if you own it.
FileMaker developers who create solutions for resell (or even as custom work for someone wanting “a database”) need to have their customers acquire the FileMaker apps necessary to run them, unless it’s a non-networked single-user kind of solution. That means either getting a reseller’s license, simply instructing the folks who buy the product that they must also independently purchase FileMaker apps, or (more commonly) providing “installation” as a service which includes purchasing and installing the FileMaker apps as well as configuring the server, setting up the workstations, etc, and charging the customer for the FileMaker apps purchased along with the installation fees.
Oh, and you can definitely advertise the fact that the database solution you’re developing / selling is a FileMaker-based solution.
Oh yes they do.
Who owns the seed?
Probably, but I think you’re likely to win in court (if you can afford to defend yourself). As long as you don’t give the impression that your product is endorsed or produced by Lipton, then you’re simply stating a fact about how your product is made.
Many years ago, I worked for a company that made computer based training systems. This was before the term multi-media was coined, mpeg was a far off dream, and nobody knew what a soundblaster was…
There was one specific Mitsubishi monitor (1381 IIRC) that our system would work with (it was multi-sync, and had an NTSC input, and input was selectable via TTL inputs).
We’d rebrand them with our company name, and drill a hole in the case to reach the focus adjustment. It seemed kind of slimey to me, so I checked into it and found that we were not breaking any laws…If we had put Mitsubishi’s name on something we actually made. that would have been another kettle of fish.
It’s hard to give a straightforward answer to this question – there are several issues involved.
But basically, the answer is that often it is illegal to incorporate someone else’s product into yours.
First of all, if the other person’s product is a patented product, then they have the right to grant exclusive licenses for use of that product. So if Intel makes patented integrated circuits then they can make a deal with Sony allowing them to be the only computer manufacturer to use their chips.
Second, if, in the example of the Lipton’s iced tea, if all you are doing is taking someone else’s product and repackaging it, then that can be a “false designation of origin” or “reverse passing off” in violation of consumer protection or trademark laws.
Heck, I’ve bought optical products that blatantly use other companies’s parts. I’ve built and sold optical devices that used other companies’s parts, with their labels showing. Sometimes that’s the reason other people bought our stuff – they knew we were using quality components.