Jump to content

P-51 Mustang's licensed by Boeing?


Andre B

Recommended Posts

15 hours ago, Andre B said:

What Mustang kits are made under license by Boeing these day's? I can se Boeing's trademark on Airfix kits but not on Tamiya's. Strange that Boeing can do this concerning an aircraft built by North American under order from UK with an R-R engine and english name and payed by taxmoney for over 75 years ago...

 

Does Airfix (and builders) also pay Boeing for making and bying an RAF Mustang IVa?

 

/André

 

The Boeing Trademark is on the 1/32 Tamiya Mustang as well as later boxing of their earlier Mustang releases (rebox).

 

As well, Tamiya's Willy's Jeep now has the Chrysler logo on the latest boxing (not first release).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, ivand said:

... or maybe it also depends on having a valid case? Good lawyers still cannot change simple facts. Concerning the concept of legal person: it just allows you to have an entity that is separate from your physical self being active in the economic arena without being responsible for its activities with your entire personal belongings. Maybe if Mr. Miklos Köves hadn't had the possibility to establish Airfix Products, he never would have taken the risk of investing in a plastic injection moulding machine. Mind you, I'm very critical of certain aspects of our capitalist system, but being simplistic is hardly a solution.

 

There is a little more to the concept of legal person than that.

 

And being simplistic is hardly a solution when the more complexity that can be introduced into living the more lucrative it becomes for those introducing the complexity and employed to deal with its wrangles. 

 

Nick

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, T7 Models said:

Of course, it helps if the original product was good as well. I do wonder if Boeing have been as quick to slap a trademark on the Douglas Devastator.

 

And I do have to mention that the US Government was in the business of selling Mustangs as well as NAA; for many years after the war they remanufactured and sold surplus P-51s to quite a few countries, particularly in South America. Which could have been interesting if NAA had trademarked the name then.

 

 

You're imagining difficulties where none existed. NA did have the Mustang trademarked then. BMW has BMW trademarked now. None of that prevents me as an owner of an old BMW getting it restored and selling it on the second-hand market. What I can't do is start making my own new car or car-related stuff and calling it a BMW product - unless BMW grants me a licence to do so, in which case there will be a negotiation leading to an agreement on whatever terms form the overlap between the two parties' percieved interests.

 

It is unimaginable that NA and the US govt did not discuss such sales and, if anything in the oriinal purchase agreement required a subsequent licence when the aircraft were resold, then they will have granted such a licence to the US govt, whether as part of a bigger negotiation about other matters or as a stand-alone deal.

 

Did the US government really "reamanufacture" aircraft for resale though? Meaning what, a big disassembly, lots of new NA and other OEM parts being bolted on, a new coat of paint and out the door? All of that is just like what I have just done with my own old BMW and causes no trademark issues at all.

 

In contrast there have been reports (I can't vouch to the truth of them) that the US govt actually reverse-engineered and built its own genuinely-from-scratch Helio Couriers as part of the CIA's illicit, clandestine and unregistered Air America fleet. If so that was illegal in US law, but then quite a lot of 60s and 70s clandestine US military-industrial activity may have been illegal in various ways, and the ruffled commercial feathers smoothed away in other ways which were not visible at the time and probaby never will be,

 

(However, that would not necessarily be trademark infringement, that depends on what they did about the badging!)

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2017-04-27 at 6:05 AM, Graham Boak said:

Try naming your product a Jeep.

 

 

Oh, don't get me started - at one point the owners of the Jeep trademark were quite aggressive (or at least obliging to anyone with the money) at pimping the Jeep logo to the world - Jeep-branded luggage and baby strollers are just two of the blasphemies that I recall. OTOH, a magazine dedicated to Jeeps had to be called "Jp" - I guess the publishers couldn't afford the licensing fee (or maybe didn't want The Powers That Be to limit their editorial freedom), in spite of their hardcore/free-publicity promotion of the brand.

 

And of course, then there are all the owners of less-noble vehicles such as RAV4's and Suzuki Sidekicks, who call their CARS "jeeps".

...:angrysoapbox.sml:

 

John

Edited by John Thompson
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've always been puzzled by the possibility of trademarking US military designations. Afterall these are allocated by the DoD and have nothing to do with the manufacturer. NA-73, NA-91 and so on are designations born within North American, but P-51 is not. Yet it's possible to do this in the USA, although I'm pretty sure that the DoD doesn't ask any permission to use such designations to the manufacturers in their internal documentations.

And yet private companies not only trademark the designations but also act to protect them, sometimes with and sometimes without success...

Nobody is ever going to produce brand new F-15s to sell them to the public (although this has happened for a number of warbirds) but this happens all the time with firearms and Colt in particular has always been very aggressive in protecting their AR15 derived products.

A few years ago Colt sued another manufacturer claiming that M4 is one of their protected trademarks (amongst other things). A US court however ruled against Colt stating that the term M4 identifies in the eye of the public a type of carbine with certain technical characteristics as used by the US Army with the designation M4 and that therefore the term could not be used as a trademark even if it had been registered as such.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

I've always been puzzled by the possibility of trademarking US military designations. Afterall these are allocated by the DoD and have nothing to do with the manufacturer. NA-73, NA-91 and so on are designations born within North American, but P-51 is not.

 

 

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the question of who is the author of a particular designation is completely irrelevant to trademark law. It is a matter of copyright law. The two are separate and different.

 

I have not read the Colt M4 case but I suspect it is a case of Colt having not adequately policed use of the M4 mark over an earlier period of time, with the result that it became accepted as generic.

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've read somewhere that 50 years ago companies stod in line to let Airfix make their cars, aircrafts and so on.
Today they are standing in line to get license money of Airfix instead if Airfix want's to create an new kit...

/André

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's because 50 Years have passed and now the value of IP is recognised as are the dangers of allowing your brand to become a generic term for the product catergory it sits in. 

 

'Airfix kit' is an example of the latter. Not on BM but it is often used as a discriptor for all model kits.

 

When products were novel and competition in the market was limited having your brand as the generic term for the product catergory was useful often people call this 'free marketing' which of coure it isn't as the marketing undertaken made the brand name synonymous with a product catergory.

 

When the market becomes saturated with products technologies are widely distributed and there is little in terms of differentiation between products then brand and brand values become very important as it's your point of difference. If your brand has been allowed to become a generic term then it's harder to trade on your brand.

 

Increasingly the Value of a company is not in its tangible assets like mould tools or CAD technology. That's stuff is easy to source. Brand is the valuable commodity.

 

Currently Hornby are in the spotlight again as the company has a tussle with some of its share holders and we wonder what will befall it and as modellers comfort ourselves that Airfix will be ok the Value in Airfix is not its tooling back catalogue but the brand as it is seen as being Iconic.

 

Thats why companies protect their IP.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I find sad about the whole situation is that large international companies, who are not exactly scratching around for revenue, should see this is a perfectly reasonable way of generating extra revenue ( probably peanuts in their scheme of things).  

 

I realise fully that morality, the spirit of the law, and the letter of the law are 3 somewhat ( but not wholly) unrelated things. However i cant help but feel that this kind of money grabbing - because that is really exactly what it is, is yet another example of the new feudalism of wealth. It is morally wrong to extract money for a trademark on a product that existed  several decades ago, bears no relation to the current owners product line, and was not sold to members of the public but purchased by government revenues.  I can see the logic in Boeing wanting a similar fee for say a model of a 767 or some other current product, but for a model of an aircraft that flew 70 odd years ago, made by a different company? It is pure and simple greed masquerading under the aegis of IP law.

 

Jonners, who continues to be disgusted by such practices.

 

 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

What I find sad about the whole situation is that large international companies, who are not exactly scratching around for revenue, should see this is a perfectly reasonable way of generating extra revenue ( probably peanuts in their scheme of things).  

 

I realise fully that morality, the spirit of the law, and the letter of the law are 3 somewhat ( but not wholly) unrelated things. However i cant help but feel that this kind of money grabbing - because that is really exactly what it is, is yet another example of the new feudalism of wealth. It is morally wrong to extract money for a trademark on a product that existed  several decades ago, bears no relation to the current owners product line, and was not sold to members of the public but purchased by government revenues.  I can see the logic in Boeing wanting a similar fee for say a model of a 767 or some other current product, but for a model of an aircraft that flew 70 odd years ago, made by a different company? It is pure and simple greed masquerading under the aegis of IP law.

 

Jonners, who continues to be disgusted by such practices.

 

 

 

Well said. Fully agree.

 

Nick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Nigel Bunker said:

I think that if they thought they could get away with it, Boeing would trademark the Wright Flyer.

Ironically the Wright brothers patented the method of flight control they used and aggressively pursued anyone using similar controls, for licence fees, to the extent that their own aircraft company fell behind in developments and it is often said held back aviation progress  in the USA during the early years. 

 

In a further irony the main target of their lawsuits was Curtiss. Curtiss later merged with Wright to form Curtiss-Wright which still exists though no longer making whole aircraft. It's possible they would have to be paid by anyone wishing to make a model of the Wright Flyer!

Edited by noelh
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Having studied law and practiced since .......  well let's just say 1/32 was a scale no one would think would catch on ......I can say Nick and Jonners have made valid observations in that let's say forty years ago no one , repeat, no one was acting in the manner Boeing is doing now.  Airfix and all the others could produce models with their names on till the cows came home and were not being chased for licences or permissions to use company  names. Indeed I suspect marketing and sales were happy their company name was getting a higher profile to Joe Public.   Quite when attitudes changed I could not say.

 

There were of course cases that were litigated RE prevention of passing off of counterfeit goods.  I can still recall the many whiskey cases from university, wonder why?  Haig for example wanted to stop another whiskey manufacturer from selling product in a "dimple" bottle.  All perfectly reasonable and understandable looking to stop customers buying something inferior to yours while being duped into thinking they were getting a quality product.

 

The beef I think comes in when the use of the law intended to protect proper reasonable commercial interests is perverted in this way.  It's not as if Boeing were truly worried that makers of plastic toys and kits were going to adversely affect their share price.  

 

As I keep saying to clients, No it really isn't the principle, it's the money.  And that's what it's all about, nothing more.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

2 hours ago, Plasto said:

What we don't know is what the licencing fee actually is for the use of Boeings IP in the context of a model aeroplane. 

 

This. How many of you actually know what heinous sum Boeing has charged Airfix, or are you all just speculating wildly about it being a fortune?

 

Edited by Work In Progress
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

What I find sad about the whole situation is that large international companies, who are not exactly scratching around for revenue, should see this is a perfectly reasonable way of generating extra revenue ( probably peanuts in their scheme of things).  

 

I realise fully that morality, the spirit of the law, and the letter of the law are 3 somewhat ( but not wholly) unrelated things. However i cant help but feel that this kind of money grabbing - because that is really exactly what it is, is yet another example of the new feudalism of wealth. It is morally wrong to extract money for a trademark on a product that existed  several decades ago, bears no relation to the current owners product line, and was not sold to members of the public but purchased by government revenues.  I can see the logic in Boeing wanting a similar fee for say a model of a 767 or some other current product, but for a model of an aircraft that flew 70 odd years ago, made by a different company? It is pure and simple greed masquerading under the aegis of IP law.

 

Jonners, who continues to be disgusted by such practices.

 

 

 

I know that this is beyond the topic here but the same evil spirit is at work when they file patents for plants, fruits and vegetables that existed millions of years.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Work In Progress said:

 

 

This. How many of you actually know what heinous sum Boeing has charged Airfix, or are you all just speculating wildly about it being a fortune?

 

 

I thought it was the principle and precedent being discussed rather than the amount being speculated as a fortune?

 

The Royal Mail recently extorted £8 from me for the privilege of collecting £4.15 on behalf of HMRC, in other words they charged 192% of the duty for collecting it. I think that provides an insight into the currently prevailing corporate bean counter mindset. It would be very simple for our legislators to rule that the fee should never exceed the duty charged but they would would probably need to be surgically separated from the symbiotic relationship they seem to have with Corporate Big Business for that to happen. 

 

Nick

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recall reading that part of the issue had to do with liability lawsuits. Apparently it absolved Boeing of any fault should junior swallow and choke on a part of a Airfix Boeing B-17 kit. And a lawyer using the "shotgun approach" to fill lawsuits would certainly involve Boeing as a party to the suit.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Don McIntyre said:

I recall reading that part of the issue had to do with liability lawsuits. Apparently it absolved Boeing of any fault should junior swallow and choke on a part of a Airfix Boeing B-17 kit. And a lawyer using the "shotgun approach" to fill lawsuits would certainly involve Boeing as a party to the suit.

 

That's insane! (I don't doubt you for a minute seeing what people get sued for these days).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Don McIntyre said:

I recall reading that part of the issue had to do with liability lawsuits. Apparently it absolved Boeing of any fault should junior swallow and choke on a part of a Airfix Boeing B-17 kit. And a lawyer using the "shotgun approach" to fill lawsuits would certainly involve Boeing as a party to the suit.

Don

I can't see a sustainable argument in law in that proposition.  However I do exclude certain States across the pond from that opinion of course :D

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...