To be honest I think John has a very good point. A while back there was a review of some figures, and one of them was obviously supposed to be Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. I can't recall what it was called, but it was similar enough to Tomb Raider there was no doubt in anybody's mind who it was supposed to be. In answer to my question somebody said it was done to avoid copywrite issues. Now whichever company did it, they were "bending the rules" so they could sell a figure. They may have done it because they knew darn well that if they ever tried to pay the roylaties on the figure there would be no way they could ever sell enough of them to justify that expense. That really doesn't matter though, they stole the likeness of that figure and they are wrong.

Now as to re-casters I suppose they could take a figure, say it was called "Pusan Marine", change the helmet in some way, call it "Pusan Soldier" and sell it as their own. How would that be different from the figure I mentioned above? It seems to me that would be legally, if maybe not morally, correct.

Where re-casters are totally wroing, it seems to me, is they take a figure, call it the same as the original, box it so it looks like the original, and sell it to people thinking they are getting the original, and making money that way. That's wrong.