I saw on the CBS Evening News that defence conractors are seeking to make the companies that make plastic models pay royalties to them since these companies are making money off the contractors designs.
Doesn’t the defence industry get enough money as it is?
Link?
Revell and Monogram and Airfix and others have been making models of aircraft (and land vehicles) for years. How is this the first time that this has come up? The same companies have produced millions of kits of Chevies, Fords, Dodges, etc. Are the Big Three (or any other automakers) doing anything similar?
I heard about this a while back and according to some it might kill the plastic model hobby industry though that may be hyperbole. I don’t think there’s a lot of money in the model business so it might be a case of these companies just trying to protect their intellectual properties. As far as I’m concerned any image of a piece of govt. equipment should be permitted.
Marc
A similar situation arose a few years ago when one of the major railroads indicted that they would no longer allow model companies to produce models painted in their liveries without some sort of royalties being paid. I don’t know how it worked out, but I haven’t noticed an absence of Union Pacific models lately.
I seem to recall that when Lionel first started producing their diesel engines, the Santa Fe and New York Central actually paid some of the development costs for the opportunity to have their corporate images displayed in toy stores. Times change.
Curate
Exactly. Unless you could prove that such a model is a security or intellectual breach of technology I can’t imagine this flying very far. The publicity would not be worth it. I wondered about the stealth models when they came out but all the prototypes are available for public viewing.
I always assumed that they did pay royalties. And I thought that the companies helped with the design to make them accurate.
Wasn’t there a big blowup about the stealth fighter coming out in model form before images of it were released to the general public?
The “F-19 Stealth Fighter” model (by Monogram IIRC) had almost no resemblance to the real F-117. It was guesswork based only on publicly-available information about what a stealth shape might look like.
I’d always assumed that the manufacturers of the real products were happy to get free advertising and good will.
I really thought this was going to be a reference to Austin Powers. I think it’s silly, myself. It reminded me of the story I heard a year or so ago about the LAPD seeking to license it’s name to prevent/make money off the depiction of the LAPD in movies, television and such.
Who determines what “enough money” is? You?
I have stock in defense companies. They pay me dividends. I could sure use more.
You have to ask yourself if these lawsuits will be good for the stock, or bad for it. I think, given the soft spot plastic models hold in the minds of baby boomers (the prime investor class), you could see a backlash sell off that depresses the value of your stock. You better sell it now, just in case…
How are there going to be sufficient royalty revenues to pay the legal and administrative costs of going after them? How much money do these tunnel-minded legal zealots think the average 12 year old has, anyway? And that’s even before the damage to an inestimable asset, good will, is considered.
Just because you *can * doesn’t mean you should, people. “Zealously defending a client’s interests” requires a broader view than we see on display here.
Not to speak for Bricker…no, wait a minute, let me speak for Bricker.
He wasn’t saying that defense contractors suing plastic model makers was a good strategy, or that it was wise, or that it was likely to make money. It may very well be that refraining from harrassing plastic model makers will generate the defense contractors more money than attempting to shut them down.
He was objecting to the notion that defense contractors make “enough” money, and that therefore they shouldn’t try to make more money.
Sure looked like it to me. Maybe you should let him speak for himself.
Let’s go to the instant replay, Bob.
OK.
Originally Posted by rippingtons_fan:
Originally Posted by Bricker:
Bricker is clearly saying that he wants the companies he owns to make more money. Everybody needs more money, that’s why they call it money.
Since he took the trouble to QUOTE rippingtons_fan in his response, that lead me to the belief that he wanted to, you know, resond to rippingtons_fan’s statement. I can’t see how any other interpretation is reasonable. But perhaps Bricker will be along in a moment and will settle our little dispute. To get in a Bricker mood, how much do you want to bet that–if he chooses to respond–Bricker will confirm my intepretation over yours? Of course, there’s a Heisenberg effect going on here, so if you don’t want to bet I’ll understand.
The thread topic is plastic models and making money from them. The default assumption, until he says otherwise, is that that’s what *Bricker * was referring to. Okay, pal?
Settle down, people.
Anyway, Bricker made no open statement about the wisdom of the lawsuit, so assuming there was one based on the “background” of the thread is perhaps unwarranted.
The problem is that the OP digressed from the basic issue (is this a proper use of patent/trademark law?) with the “enough money” comment.
I heard the following story, but I have no cite.
When the SR-71 (or A-12) Blackbird was presented to the public, model makers naturally wanted to include it in their catalogues. Unfortunately for them, the aircraft’s dimensions were classified.
There was an overhead view of the aircraft sitting on the ramp at Edwards (or Palmdale). ‘Tell us,’ said the model makers, ‘Are the dimensions of your ramp classified?’ ‘No,’ replied the Powers That Be, who told them the diemsions of the concrete squares that made up the ramp. The model makers used basic algebra to determine the dimensions of the aircraft from the large concrete grid the Air Force provided. 
From the Forbes article:
So the model guys have been paying royalties for years for commercial products, but not for military stuff and now the aircraft manufacturers want to lay a “new” assessment on their military equipment.
I tend to side with the manufacturers, with a couple of caveats:
- No retroactive claims for sales prior to their first attempt to grab more cash;
- Pre-existing copyright laws (or the statute of limitations
) apply to old birds (for Boeing to claim money for a North American plane (P-51) that has not been manufactured in over 50 years, simply because Boeing bought out the company that bought out the company that originally designed the plane, seems to be more than a bit over the top).
(The modelmakers are also being a bit disingenuous. Many WWII era planes were private ventures for which the manufacturers hoped to find buyers, not military requisitions and even requisitioned aircraft were designed by the companies, not by the military. The North American P-51 was a private response to a British request. The fact that the USAAF decided to buy into it after it had been built does not seem to me to relieve Monogram-Revell from the obligation to compensate North American (then Rockwell, then Boeing). (I’d still declare a statute of limitation on ancient aircraft, but the modelmakers’ argument is flawed.))