Reagan Thomas wrote: > Nathanael Rebsch wrote: > >> i once took care of sorting out the legal situation of OpenTTD. >> OpenTTD was reverse engeneered from Transport Tycoon (Deluxe, IIRC). >> This work was done in Sweden, where now law prohibited the reverse >> engeneering if lisence agreements (e.g. eula) did not take care of such >> notices - on this very CD of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, this indeed was >> missing. >> >> (Assumed) Copyright of TTD used to belong to Micropose - in fact they >> only ever had production rights - copyright was still with the >> manager-company of chris sawyer (to mee unknown at that time). >> Micropose was bought by Atari, so i contacted their legal department (a >> few times actually) - which is where chris sawyers managers were >> mentioned to me. after lengthy talks i called the company in the UK. >> >> end result: they were well aware of OpenTTD, they were not happy, they >> would like to take the matter to court... BUT a few things just stand in >> the way: >> OpenTTD is released under GPL, there is no money behind OpenTTD, so in >> fact there is nothing they could archieve with taking OpenTTD to court. >> >> what i want to express: >> Airlines will most likely be very familiar with Flightgear. They will >> very much know that liveries exist, and that these are distributed under >> GPL compatible lisences. >> they probably have larger legal departments and know everything they >> need to know about such a project. >> and there is probably a very good reason why they did not contact >> Flightgear before. >> >> Generally you can wait until you receive a notice, before needing to >> take action - some companies even risk that - and there is usually a lot >> more money to be gotten than with Flightgear or other GPL released projects. >> >> greets >> Nathanael Rebsch >> >> >> >> > Out of curiosity, a few years ago I contacted American Airlines legal > dept in charge of trademarks and asked if their livery could be used on > aircraft made available for or with FlightGear. The short answer is, > no, they won't permit it. By US law, trademarks *must* be actively > protected by their holders or they become common and unprotected in the > eyes of the law. With that in mind, they really have no choice but to > officially refuse permission. > > However, reading between the legal weasel-words in their response and > having had a glimpse into how the real world operates, you could put > their AA logo on a nice, shiny aircraft model available for download and > they will most likely turn their heads and look away. Overlay a vulgar > work on top of their logo on your plane and you'll get a C&D letter as > soon as they find out about it
I doubt you'd even get a letter, even if they spot it (and they surely will). i guess in many cases they do not like it, however - they will probably do nothing about it. and even if you have an aircraft with livery the airlines could ask you to stop distributing - 1. damage is done, and others may distribute, 2. FG is not responsible for liveries other people release under GPL, this only affects the aircraft itself and their authors. i have no idea how FS does it, or XPlane. but as long as no money flows, you are on a safe side. greets Nathanael Rebsch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
