Use of trademarked logos on liveries may possibly fall under nominative fair
use, assuming they are accurate, as depiction of the trademarks are
necessary to depict a publicly visible plane. To quote wikipedia with my
own comments in brackets, and randomly using American Airlines as the
example:
The nominative use test essentially states that one party may use or refer
to the trademark of another if:
The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the
trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product
attribute) [It is impossible to depict an American Airlines plane without an
accurate AA livery]
The user only uses so much of the mark as is necessary for the
identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol) [The livery is
accurate to what AA paints on their own planes, which are readily visible as
a 'real-life' thing that anyone can see, and we simulate]
The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark
holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same
test applies for metatags. [Since FG has _many_ liveries and isn't just,
say, an American Airlines simulator, no reasonable person would believe
sponsorship or endorsement by the airlines whose liveries are recreated in
the simulation]
At any rate, that only applies to U.S. trademark laws, so mileage may vary.
At any rate I'd think we have fair use of trademarks on airliner liveries,
so long as they are accurate. I think you'd run into trouble if you made up
an 'imaginary' AA livery.
Jim
On 22 June 2010 16:20, Nathanael Rebsch <nathan...@dihedral.de> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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