Copyright Infringement?

I doubt the buildings are 'copyrighted' as such. Now if you use the building or company name in selling that could be an issue. A building 'name' like Empire State Building could be an issue. But if you call it 'Stone 2 story office' might be better. 'Design trade dress' is another issue.....but if they are older one off buildings doubt that come into play. Design Trade dress is like Mc Donald's arches etc.....

no news is good news.

Their design might be, but that might also be held by the architech or firm that designed the building.

Makes me wonder (for about as long as it took to type this...) if any of the producers of the kits that are out there that do have actual prototypes have ever bothered to concern themselves about this detail,

Do you think that anyone bothers to license copyright designs related to the rolling stock and engines that are produced?

Buildings built before 1990 cannot be copyrighted;  the U.S. did not begin affording protection to architectural works until then.

I believe the OP is about copyrights on Evergreen and Plastruct shapes when used to make molds.

Rusty

Oops, you're right Rusty.

Interesting question.  There would have to be creative expression in the styrene products.  Simple shapes no, but a pattern of shingles, etc.?

Possibly... I don't think there is a definite answer under copyright law.  

Trademark

Copyright

Patent

Which item has them?

Andrew

Trademark:  designations of origin, such as brand names.  Possibly a distinctive trade dress or product design, so long as it is not functional.

Copyright: Expressive works of authorship embodied in a tangible medium.

Patent: New, useful, and non-obvious  machines, processes, or compositions of matter, where the Patent Office has examined and found the claimed subject matter patentable. Also design patents, available for new, non-obvious, and non-functional ornamental designs applied to an article of manufacture.

Building images can be trademarked. I worked for a company that did some work with the Empire State Building so I know for certain that they do have a trademark on both the name and image of the building and you'd have to contact Empire State Realty and Trust (ESRT) if you wanted to offer a scale model. I know the same is also true for Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. That trademark is held by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Lego had to sign licensing agreements with both ESRT and the Western PA Conservancy in order to offer their models of the Empire State Building and Fallingwater. All that said, we're talking about truly iconic, internationally recognized buildings. I doubt you'd have any such issues with buildings of lesser status. 

Alan,

While not a legal answer I would suggest you are OK to move forward.  

The volume and magnitude of what we do in the model train industry is very small, and typically the paperwork will cost more than the possible profit for a license.

If the question is copyright issue of the Plastruct and Evergreen shapes.....that might come into play if you cast Plastruct items exactly as they sell them without alteration of any kind.

As soon as you cut, glue, sand and shape the plastic it becomes a raw material used to fabricate a new 'item'.....

W-e-l-l-l....when I was researching brewery reefers, I heard about somebody who had

done, I think, HO, beer reefers from old photos for a  long defunct brewery in Ohio, all of which brewery's rights had been bought up by Megabrew St. Louis.  The guy was

having model reefers and tee shirts printed up with that logo, just trying to honor his

home town with a local brew car to run in trains.  He DID get raided by the feds and

everything with that defunct logo was confiscated.

Another defunct Ohio brewery's logo I researched had been bought up by somebody

who slapped a few on G scale cars, but was not receptive to sharing it.  In my research I could not find that brewery operated its own reefer fleet, but it did make beer shipments out in RR provided reefers.  They did operate a very large fleet of trucks with a nifty logo on them, which would have looked great on reefers, if they had existed.

While General Motors had no intention of stocking fenders for your 1934 Chevrolet Master DA in their dealer parts bins, they have been really surly in the past if somebody reproduces such fenders for car collectors.   (I think just about everything

except, and maybe not excepting, frames and engine blocks have been reproduced for

the Model A Ford)

I dealt in NASCAR licensing for a number of years. You want to get lawyers involved do something unauthorized of DE Sr at any time!!!

The 'FEDS' will not be the first thing that you see if you violate copyright. There is a procedure you HAVE to follow....or you loose. IF, and I say IF, a model railroad manufacture got a visit from Federal officers it may have been the first such occurrence ever. The Federal agency in charge is too short handed to catch billions of dollars worth of illegal products from overseas......we never had them get involved in any domestic case where less than one million in damages was proven....then it was still just letters sent.....no raids.

If someone was raided it was after all legal venues had been exhausted and the 'damage' was in the millions.

That said. Don't infringe. Many times being legal cost pennies. Today we still do licensing with a handshake and verbal OK. But doing something and knowing it is wrong will get you in trouble.  

I, of course, heard the story from someone in a train show, who was selling HO models

he made up of a different, but defunct, with rights presumed in the public domaine,

brewery neighboring that bought by Megabrew.  I,  and probably he, had no firsthand knowledge. (or maybe, even, the recounter had also done the other brewery cars,

and was not admitting he had gotten pounced on)  Maybe just a lawyer showed up.  This would have happened at least a decade ago.  There were no O scale models of the logoed HO reefers he was selling, nor, to my knowledge, yet, of its purchased neighbor.  With Brooklin making a widening selection of Buick, Olds, Pontiac, and with a few early Chevrolet models available (and Rextoy catalogued Buicks before Rextoy died), I am guessing the GM licensing hassle has been worked out (although Brooklin has done no series of Chevrolets like there has been for Buick)  When I was a kid in my AMT 1/25th phase, there were no shortage of GM models in that scale, including current vehicles in production.

Many thanks to all of you who answered this post. I have learned other useful facts about topics I hadn't thought of. Very thoughtful of all of you!

I hope no one's considering actually building the Empire State Building. It's over 30 feet tall in our O'gauge and you would even see the trains because they're barely taller than the lobby ceiling...

Patent Law doesn't apply and unless you are using someone else's trademark like a brewery logo in your design, then trademark does not apply either.

The issue is copyright; Copyrights, thanks to Disney, now extends over a 100 years past the life of the author/owner. But to get large damages, the copyright must be registered with the Trademark & Copyright Office.

If so, the infringement damages are extensive and are additive with each infringement.

Although Plastruct's catalog is copyrighted as of 2006, nothing within the catalog is stated as copyrighted. However, you do not need to register to have protection under the Berne Convention. Thus any unique names that Plastruct uses to define its unique shapes and patterns belong to Plastruct.

This means that Plastruct can not own the non-unique name "Brick" as it is associated with a brick pattern but they would own a unique brick pattern. Kind of like Sherwin Williams cant own the color blue but they can own the unique name "arctic blue" for its blue.

If you are taking and using Evergreen and Plastruct products to make the master molds that would be infringement; if the pattern is unique; so make up your own patterns and you would be ok.

Thanks Alan, and everyone again for your posts. 

This morning I was pondering all the info you guys shared with me on this subject. The 3D printer came to mind. If I were in the laser or injection moulding business, I would be tempted to formulate a plan B in case this new technology takes over.

Of course, this is going to open all kinds of legal Pandora's boxes, since one can get a drawing or photo from anywhere off the web, transfer it to a CAD program, then start printing. As usual, new technology can be both a blessing and a bane!

HUGE....and I mean huge leaps in 3D printing will have to be made before the injection mold will be challenged. Way too much to go into on a model train forum......but as long as a injection mold machine can produce six copies of an item a minute out of very cheap plastic pellets the 3D printer will be regulated to prototyping and extremely low production numbers. Time is money and the 'mold' has a BIG advantage right now for making mass produced items.  

Yeah, injection modling is impossible to beat once you want to crank out stuff.  The latest thing my son and I produced on the 3D printer - a high resolution, five-inch high tyrannosaurus head made from a laser scan file posted online by a university paleontology department up in dinosaur country, took nearly 18 hours to print and required nearly a full reel of plastic - much more expensive than a few ounces of pellets.  I see no way 3D printing will replace injection molding in speed or cost, ever, in mass production.  But it is good for the hobbyist or the prototyping phase of products. You could use one, one time, to make, say, brick walls and window frames for a building of your own making - not infringing, then use that for the mold.  There is software (which I am still not expert at using) that permits you to start with one solid box (a brick) and copy and past it into a row or bricks, coy and paste that into a wall, etc.  A building face would be fairly easy - conceptually, although it is still a bit  beyond what I have tried to learn, yet.