wrote:
Ridiculous, there is zero chance of someone 'ripping off' a 777

design by building a model of it. There is no comparison
between marketing a thing that looks like a bigger thing and playing
copyrighted music.

And the basis for that opinion is?

The Boeing 777 didn't just spring to life by magic. While I'm not
necessarily a big Boeing fan, the precise design of that airframe was
the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of work and testing.

Copyright law has been around for a long time, it is in the U.S.
Constitution. It has long been recognized that a person is entitled to
protection when he comes up with a new idea.

If you copyrighted your message (if it is indeed copyrightable), and
someone reproduced it as a part of something that was for financial
gain, you would be entitled to royalties.

If you were to spend your time, money and effort coming up with an
airplane design that you marketed, how would you feel if someone made
tee shirts depicting it or models of it and sold those and made money
on it? Why should they get income as a result of your genius? If a
model maker makes a plastic airplane that doesn't look like something
on the market, he pays no royalties; however, the models that are
valuable are those that copy an existing real airplane. So, why should
the model maker who piggybacks on the efforts of the people who came up
with the idea for the real airplane, spent a fortune testing it and
risked people's lives in flight test, not pay something for the right
to reproduce copies of the original? Seems to me that the model maker
is getting something for nothing if he doesn't pay a royalty,
especially when the models are often extremely accurate.

All the best,
Rick


Rick,
I understand the legal arguments, and by right, the manufacturers
deserve compensation. Maybe I wasn't clear about this in my original
post, but I don't have a problem in principal with paying royalties to
intellectual property owners. What I think makes this "wrong" is that
the royalties some manufacturers are asking for are IMHO way out of line
with the real value of the IP - we're talking about 12" plastic models
for pete's sake, not ripped off parts crowding out the OEM's parts!

Added to this is the fact that for 50 years no royalties were paid and
there was a tacit understanding that whatever IP infringement was going
on was worth the goodwill and publicity the models generated. If I am
not mistaken, doesn't chronic lack of effort in protecting intellectual
property figure into IP infringement cases? If it does, then 50 years
of letting this slide supports my case.

In any event, to a Lockheed Martin or Boeing this is not even pocket
change - it's pocket lint. If enough people feel like me and let
manufacturers know that if they treat the plastic model makers too
harshly that it will affect their image, then maybe they'll lighten up.
That was one of my goals when I sent the original post.

Blue skies!

-Aviv Hod