Military aircraft manufacturers demand royalties for... plastic models!

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 at 05:26:15 in message
, Ross Oliver
wrote:

The same intellectual property rights that protect the original designs
also apply to the kits themselves. If manufacturer A were to start selling
model airplane kits that were reverse-engineered copies of manufacturer
B's kits, I'm sure B would not hesitate to cry foul and run to the lawyers.


That sounds right , one manufacturer would be clearly trying to steal
the market of another.

If kit manufacturers don't want to pay to use the fruits of someone else's
labor ("one and one half percent of anticipated profits" to quote the
first cited web site), they are certainly free to create their own
original aircraft, auto, and train designs.

I am probably wrong but this sounds a bit weird to me. Is there any
attempt to change the design of an aircraft to make it more attractive
to model manufacturers? I think not. The making of an effigy cannot
really be stealing the fruits of the manufacturers labour? Would it
apply to the manufacturer of model buildings? There is a better case
there because architects are trying to make a building visually
attractive. Only the paint scheme of an aircraft is designed to do
that. Some manufacturers might pay to have their goods modelled to boost
the sales of the original.

Anyway the possibilities are endless: model vacuum cleaners, model
gardens, model cars (much better case there), model spades, model
computers, model DVD players and model wheel clamps to go with model
cars! :-)

This is not a serious contribution!
--
David CL Francis