On Thursday 10 April 2008 11:33, Melchior FRANZ wrote: > http://www.johnmacneill.com/WWII_Bomber.html > http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/liberate-b-24-liberator > > m.
Thanks for posting that. I think the EFF article has the best take on it - it was not appropriate grant the term "B-24" as a trade-mark in the first place. The article points out that "B-24" is a US Military model number but perhaps even more importantly, it should have made it clear that "B-24" is just one entry in an identification scheme devised by, and therefore 'owned' by, the US military, which means, in effect, the US government. There are actually two potential issues raised by this - trademark law and copyright law. In this case, L-M seem to have gone for trademark law, specifically over the use of "B-24" and because of this there should be no problem with releasing any of the PB4Y-1 Naval variants. Similarly, any of the B-24 models used by the RAF, and known as "Liberators" would also not be covered (I'm not sure if the name 'Liberator' was originated in the US but it was standard practice for the RAF to re-name US aircraft e.g. the B-29 SuperFortress became the 'Washington', the Douglas A-20 Havoc became the Boston etc, but in any case, the trademark is for "B-24" and not "Liberator"). Furthermore, if it is "B-24" that has been trademarked, it is questionable if this covers specific variants such as B-24A/B/C/D/E/G/H/J models as once again, these are specific entries in the US Military numbering scheme. Copyright law may yet become an issue in these types of case, because copyright deals with the actual design and is intended to stop copyrighted designs from being copied for means of profit. However, even this has become a bit of a minefield because the copyrighted design, in the case of aircraft for example, is for a real aircraft and not a model or representation of it, which does not purport to be an actual example of the real article, and which may include paintings, drawings, cartoons, photographs or 3D models. It is also unlikely that laws will be introduced to prevent people from making reproductions of things they have seen in public with their own eyes. I seem to remember that copyright was used by the people who installed the lights on the Eiffel Tower to stop other people from selling postcards showing the tower at night. In this case though, it could be argued that the whole point of the postcards was to primarily show the lighting design, which was copyrighted, and not the tower itself, which was not. Re the point about laws preventing people from making reproductions of things they have seen, there should be nothing to prevent a photographer from taking a photograph of the Eiffel Tower lights and exhibiting it to others, as long as they don't do so for profit, because it's their personal view and artistic expression of something they've seen in the public domain. We do need to keep our eyes on this though. LeeE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save $100. Use priority code J8TL2D2. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
