Some of you in IPMS may well see this in your e-mail or newsletters if your chapter contacts are on the ball. Those unaffiliated should read this and consider talking to your representatives about this.
CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF YOUR HOBBY
By: Tom Cleaver
For the past several years, the scale model hobby has been under an assault that is powerful enough to lead to its complete destruction, though many participants are not aware of the problem.

I first became personally aware of this when I was hired to do a project for Revell-Monogram back in 1999. This involved getting some information on airplanes, so I decided to go to the source - the aircraft manufacturers - and ask for their material. When I called Northrop-Grumman, I was referred to the Legal Department, where a not-so-friendly attorney launched into a long and not-so-friendly discussion of how it was that the hobby industry was stealing the intellectual property of the companies by making unlicensed models of their trademarked products. After a few minutes of this, I decided to bail out of the conversation by claiming ignorance and the fact that I was in no position to influence the policies of Revell-Monogram. The next call was to Boeing, where I was quickly referred to the “licensing administrator,” whose conversation was limited to informing me that the licensing fee for obtaining the information was one and a half percent of anticipated profits from the line of models the project involved. I used the same parachute I had used at Northrop-Grumman.

My next call was to the executive at Revell-Monogram who had hired me, to ask just what in hell was going on. I learned that since at least the mid-1990s, companies like Boeing and Northrop-Grumman have been attempting to impose licensing fees on model companies, for the privilege of making “representations” of their “trademarked intellectual property,” i.e., the airplanes they produced.

Since I make my living by the sale of my intellectual property and have a general understanding of this issue, and most of you have never considered the question of copyright and trademark law, let me explain this situation, and what it means to you and your hobby.

Basically, since the outset of the hobby 50 years ago, the makers of model kits were free to design and construct replicas at will, providing playthings, toys, educational products and model kits to the public. The manufacturers of the original items - where they paid attention to the model industry at all - considered these items to be free advertising. Perhaps the fact that many of their employees (at least it was true in aerospace) also built models and were participants in the hobby meant that there were people in decision-making positions who had a personal stake in the continued existence of the hobby.

About 15 years ago, the corporate legal departments realized that all those car models represented a possible revenue stream, and that none of the makers of car kits was big enough to take on General Motors, Ford, or any of the others in a long-term legal battle over trademark infringement. In fact, the companies had a case, since their designs were their original products, and were identifiable and known to the public as Fords, Chevys, Caddies, etc. Thus, the auto companies decided to demand licensing and royalty payments from those making replicas of their cars and within a few years most makers of car replicas were licensed and paying those royalties.

This was followed by the train hobby, with various railroads demanding licensing for use of their logos and names on the cars, and in the area of race cars where even decal makers were required to obtain licenses to produce decals with company logos as seen on the cars.

In the case of the car model hobby, the production runs of mainstream kits are still sufficiently large that the licensing is affordable to the manufacturer. However, for the resin kit cottage industry, it was the kiss of death - nobody who was going to make 100 kits if the mold held out that long was in a position to meet the demands. Thus, you haven’t seen too many resin car models produced in the past ten years.

And just in case you were wondering, you have paid these licensing fees, since the cost was passed on by the manufacturer, and you haven’t built too many cars lately that are subjects the mainstream wouldn’t produce.

Starting since at least 1996, major aircraft makers have begun to jump on this bandwagon, and here is where the problem gets personal for those of us who frequent sites like Modeling Madness and build airplane models.

Companies like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Sikorsky and others are demanding licensing and royalty payments for military aircraft replicas. Not only that, but several Air Forces are now asking for licensing payments to make decals of their insignias!

The model kit industry argues in response that military equipment, including ships, tanks, aircraft and the like have all been paid for by public funds, i.e. the taxes we pay the U.S. Government. Given that these aircraft makers would certainly not be making these subjects without a government contract and a guarantee of a sale for every piece they make, they are not “proprietary,” particularly since an aviation historian can cite instances where a company designed something in response to a government request for proposals, and then lost the production contract to another company without recompense or where more than one company built the product at government direction without any payments being made to the original company. While the companies who built “Flying Fortresses,” “Liberators,” “Mustangs,” “Hellcats,” etc., may well have had significant input into the choice of name, the name was in the end designated by the government entity purchasing the aircraft, so the names cannot be privately trademarked.

Sounds reasonable to me, but then I’m not some 20-something drone in the back of the law library of the legal department at Boeing, with a student loan debt of $100,000 and a desperate need to gain favorable notice from the employer by economically justifying my existence.

The big model companies are fighting this and holding off the manufacturers by not answering the letters and phone calls, because even they don’t have the resources to make the kind of fight all the way up to the Supreme Court that it would take to legally establish this bit of common sense.

It doesn’t take an MBA to know what the result would be if Jules Bringuer were to pick up his phone some morning and hear a posh Brit accent say, “Mr. Bringuer, this is British Aerospace (owner of the “trademarks” for Hawker, Supermarine, Avro, deHavilland, Gloster, Sopwith, Blackburn, Westland, etc., etc.) and I am very sorry to tell you this, but you owe us $200,000 for all the kits you’ve illegally produced of our trademarked products.” Bye-bye Classic Airframes, MPM, Eduard, Roden and every other company in Eastern Europe.

So, what to do?

Mike Bass, who heads up Stevens International, the North American importer of Trumpeter kits (among others), has this past year taken up this cause with a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress. Mike has recently informed me that he has received a call from his representative, Congressman Robert Andrews, who has stated that he will take up this issue in the new Congress that takes office on January 20, 2005, and will undertake an investigation, and if necessary will offer legislation ending the licensing of these public-domain subjects.

Folks, this isn’t a left/right, liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat issue. It’s our ox that’s being gored by these Corporate Bulls!

You can play an active role in stopping this in its tracks. Of the thousands of daily visitors to Modeling Madness, a majority of them seem to be from the United States. That’s a lot of American modelers whose enjoyment of this hobby is at risk if this attempt by the aircraft manufacturers is successful.

What can you do? You can write Mike’s congressman at this address:

Congressman Robert Andrews
2439 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Trust me, if he gets thousands of letters from modelers in the United States asking him to take action, Action Will Be Taken.

And you can also write your congress-critter and tell them about this problem - let them know your concern for the future of this hobby and the continued good fortune of all those independent entrepreneurs running hobby shops and mail order companies and decal-makers and aftermarket companies and their employees who would be put out of their jobs, and all the points made above in the argument against licensing.

If you don’t know which critter is yours, go to http://www.house.gov/

Type in your Zip+4, and you will get your Congressman’s name and office address and office telephone number. If you’ve got an unlimited domestic long distance phone deal, call the Congressman’s office and talk to one of the staff - they pay attention to people who call. Send the Congressman or woman a letter. Trust me on this, when a Congressman gets thousands of letters in support of a particular issue, they sit up and take notice. When those are thousands of different letters, i.e., not “ditto” letters from some special interest campaign, they take even more notice.

Be sure to cc: Congressman Andrews, so he and his staff will know who else in the House knows. Be sure to call or write your Senators, too.

This one isn’t hard: you’re asking them to defend small business, individual entrepreneurship, and the right of the people of the United States to have the full enjoyment of the property rights they have bought and paid for.

And yes, do tell all your modeling friends who don’t come to Modeling Madness and who aren’t on the internet about this. The more the merrier and the greater the likelihood of success.

Or do you not want new kits, decals, and aftermarket products at prices you can afford for the continuing enjoyment of the hobby that keeps you sane?

It really aggravates me that these companies think they "own" these designs. I don't dispute that they are the designers, but as AJLaFleche stated, the designs were paid for with public money. Since the public provided the funds to design and manufacture something that other wise would not exist, the public should have access to unclassified information of the design.

I will definitely send them a letter. This really pisses me off.

I figured they were already paying them

hey Al

You have an e-mail address for these critters. I spend a great deal of time on the net on this and a couple of dozen other sites. Get me an e-mail address and along with my letter I 'll help spread the word. These clowns need to be stopped in thier tracks.

Harry

can people from europ react to?

This is not crying wolf, either. In 2004 the model railroad industry was suffering from mega-railroad Union Pacific suing manufacturer Athearn and Lionel for this same issue. They settled after, IIRC, a $200,000,000 lawsuit was filed against the model makers.

Story

UP's Side

You're certainly welcome, however, politics being what they are, a complaint from a voter who can send his/her vote somewhere else has a lot more clout.

Just go to the corporate website for whomever you want to reach. There's always a "Contact Us" link.

That is truley insane, lets start a strike!!! lol Im just kidding... :-)

I sent out an E-mail to my Representative, for what it's worth.

same

Is this just American companys doing this or is it a world wide problem. If its worldwide perhaps we should all write to our appropriate goverments

This is what happens when Wal-Mart comes to town to put it in a phase large companies start demanding fees for the use of publicly own military equipment copyrights. It is obsence! I'm know how these lawyers are, I'm married to a lawyer .. one of the good one and not one out to break the little man. Sadly there are a lot out there chasing the dollar.

I would hight recommend that you write your congressman or women and tell them that this we not only be wrong to impose royalties on military equipment and other publicly own equipment but it would more importantly be the death of the small Mom and Pop operation. The small business person will not be able to fight the legal battles needed to stay alive, it would just be easier to close up shop. Then we the modeller will be stuck with fewer and fewer choices. Because most of these small companies from what I've seen do it for the passion and not the profit.

Here would lay a question who owns the trademarked intellectual property on now defunct companies? Who owns the designs of military eqipment? What would happen to you if you scratchbuild a model and the design holder saw your model?

Write you congressperson and keep the ball rolling, you can fight city hall! I for one will as as a train hobbist as will I knew about UP and have never bought anything with name on it since.

Later
Dave

ok its done
thanks for the update

reb

Roll out em b-29's and pay them a visit and drop letters on them. Freaking #%$# never ceases to amaze me at how a corparation try to get money , if only we could go slap there CEO's across the face.

or force them to donate the licence fee/royaltiy to charity for the likes of ex-services ect at least the money grabbers dont get it and imagine the stink that'd be kicked up if they refused to turn it over you'd get more people than model builders on your side.......but yes it sucks anything for a few quid

That is truley insane, lets start a strike!!! lol Im just kidding...

no,get the name of your Rep and Senator.Tell them how you feel,ask them for a definitive answer.If they say they must side with big buisnes,vote against them.

As for our Friends across the puddle,there may be a similar governing body to contact.

I hope they don't come home and arrest us because of "unlicenced" models we made so far...

Funny things happen in life!

Cagin

Accurate Armour paid a liecencing fee to Landrover for the wolf design it's probaly why you dont see any up to date 90/100/wolf kits in plastic due to the liecencing costs you only have to look at the AA wolf to see why

sounds bad
how much is the license fees?

Believe it not I can actually see both sides of this argument. I think most of it started with the die cast collectable “models.” Everything from NASCAR cars to tractors (read John Deere) took off in the die cast business and the manufacturers of the die cast had to pay licensing fees to the Deere, Ford, Chevy, Freightliner, Caterpillar, Kenworth, etc. I think that is fair. Someone is making money off the company name and the company deserves a cut. (This allows some them some control over how their name is used, protecting their reputation.) This applies to civilian non-military hardware that the company paid to design. I don’t have any problem at all with Boeing expecting a licensing fee if I am going to market a 747 model. They paid to design it, they should get a cut.
Now things get muddy. What about KC-135s and AWACS planes that are military versions of a civilian airframe? What about AFVs that have no civilian application? I think Congress here in the States needs to step up to the plate here and tell the military hardware manufactures that they need to waive the domestic licensing fees since the taxpayers here have already paid their share. But what do you do about overseas model companies? Should foreign companies profit from domestic designs? This applies to all countries, not just the United States. What about model companies headquartered here with manufacturing facilities overseas?
I don’t have any idea what the answers are but I have dealt with licensing issues here at work recently and protecting proprietary and intellectual property is getting to be a huge deal. For example, we put a picture of a raw gray iron casting we make for a major automotive manufacturer on our company web site. There was no company name, part number or trademarks visible on the casting anywhere. One of their lawyers called and asked to us remove the picture. It is getting that bad. They were afraid someone, somewhere, would copy the design of the casting by looking at a picture of it on our website. How the people who wanted to copy would ever have found the picture or even known what is was is beyond me but we had to remove it anyway.
Our website:
http://www.atlasfdry.com/products.htm

Click around, some of the stuff we make it pretty cool. Just don't steal any designs...


Just some thoughts,
Shaun

Interesting. A similar thing has happened in the figure modelling world. The artist Don Trioani sued and succesfully closed Old Glory, who produced 3-D versions of his paintings, as he claimed they were infringing on his work and copyright. He actually succeded. Though the intreresting thing is he only shows one side of a person so surely the other side is the sculpter artistic licence? Anyway he was succesful.

The same could happen the Andrea with all of the movie figure. they are blatant rip off of movie characters with different names. this is how they avoid it but in essence they are infringing on the intellectual propersty of hollywood but imagine if they had to pay license fees they would go bust.

Unfortuanatly it is a case of intellectual property against the survival of a hooby. Hopefully some middle ground can be found.

Interesting. A similar thing has happened in the figure modelling world. The artist Don Trioani sued and succesfully closed Old Glory, who produced 3-D versions of his paintings, as he claimed they were infringing on his work and copyright. He actually succeded. Though the intreresting thing is he only shows one side of a person so surely the other side is the sculpter artistic licence? Anyway he was succesful.

The same could happen the Andrea with all of the movie figure. they are blatant rip off of movie characters with different names. this is how they avoid it but in essence they are infringing on the intellectual propersty of hollywood but imagine if they had to pay license fees they would go bust.

Unfortuanatly it is a case of intellectual property against the survival of a hooby. Hopefully some middle ground can be found.