Hi all,
I was wondering if commercial parts (e.g. light castings) were covered by copyright law at all? I.e. the shape, profile, etc. of the part in question.
Cheers,
tbdanny
If you’re talking about detail parts for your trains, they might be covered by patent law - I doubt if the design is copyrighted. If you’re worried about casting the parts for your own use, don’t - nobody will come after you for it. If you’re casting them for sale, again, don’t, and you’ll be fine. However, I don’t claim to be a legal expert. If you’re really paranoid about it, talk to a lawyer.
Actually, I don’t do casting at all - I’m a couple of years off detailing anything. I’m just curious because I’ve seen posts about it.
Generally, the detail parts we buy from our LHS are replicas of parts from the 1:1 railroad world. Most are generic, i.e grab irons, MU hoses, cab shades. So if there were patents on the real parts, I don’t think that translates to HO models. The only concern I might have was if I made a mold from a suppliers part, made copies, and sold them. Even the actual model 5131 pneumatic outlets and the ACF Center Flow cars produced by Athearn for the BB kits were once protected by patents. But in the years before UP’s "it’s our paint scheme and name and if you use it, we want money " days. ACF willingly assisted Athearn in replicating the car.
The law has frequently befuddled me because it is often illogical and arbitrary, and is subject to opinion. Perhaps that’s why there are so many lawyers.
If the parts are commercially available, moral standards would call me to purchase the parts rather than make copies of the castings for personal use.
If the parts are unavailable, I would cast the parts for personal use.
Mark
Even for an intellectual property attorney (the high falutin’ name for a lawyer who works in patent, trademark, copyright, or trade secrets) this is a confused area. You can copyright the drawings and plans for a cast part, and it may well be that to copy the product of those drawings – that is, copy the part that results - is also a violation, but there is debate over how copyright extends to the product. It is also possible to copyright the physical appearance of a distinctive part, although as the above poster indicates, a copy of a prototype is only original to the extent it varies from that prototype. For example a sideframe to an EMD Blomburg truck is one thing; a sideframe to an EMD Blomburg truck that happens to fit perfectly onto a Stewart power chassis might be another. At some point patent law takes over but even then this can be a confusing area.
A pretty good rule of thumb is that parts copied for your own use are unlikely to pose any legal challenge, but if you offer them to others or sell them, then you have deprived the originator of profits. Whether that exactly tracks the law is not really the point.
This was a very real issue when it became evident that many very nice detail parts of the 1950s and earlier had been cast in defective zinc alloy and were crumbling into nothing. Guys were racing the clock to make a usable copy before the original simply crumbled into metallic dust. Lionel, Dorfan among toy trains, and Varney and Penn Line for scale models – some very expensive model trains were vulnerable.
Dave Nelson
This link has some interesting reading http://www.rbs2.com/copyr.htm It does not take the place of legal counsil but, for the most part explains it pretty clear. To put it all in a nutshell, yes, they are covered.
If someone creates a work, such as a retaining wall, the “look” of that wall has a copyright on it. They don’t have a copyright on retaining walls in general, only the “look” of the one they created. This is where things can get tricky though. If two people create a stone retaining wall with, say, an arched top, at different times and the length, width, and radius of the top is the same but, the “texture” is different then there should be no problem.
Copying work for your own use supposedly is legal, but has been debated everywhere from coffee shops to court rooms. Copying to sell or give away is definitely a no-no.
The morality of doing this has also been discussed and I will leave that up to you as to how you feel about that.
something to consider though is this. I manufacturer a product. If people buy one copy of the product and make numerous copies for themselvs my sales drop. Now, if my sales of that product are not very high, my first impression is that it is not needed or wanted so I stop making it. if it happens enough then I stop production altogether, and shut my business down, as it in not worth my while. This aff
An interesting question and some interesting responses.
To draw an analogy, think of the music industry and recordings. It has been long accepted, and adjudicated in the courts, that if purchase a record, CD etc. I have the right make a copy of it (or a portion of it) for my own personal use. In ‘the old days’ that would allow someone to purchase record and then make a copy of it on cassette tape to play in their car. Now it would allow someone to purchase a CD and then transfer it to their MP3 player for their own personal use. The law also allows them to rip the CD to their computer harddrive as a backup so they could make a copy of it in case the original is damaged. The law doesn’t allow you to copy the CD and sell it to others or to share it on various peer to peer networks. There are numerous cases where people have been sued for the lost profits for free downloading of music.
The same rational applies to making castings. If I purchase the part I should have the right to make a mold and copies of the original for my own personal use. I have a friend is exceptionally talented at making molds and castings. He would buy a commercial part such as a retaining wall and because he needed 50 pieces he would make a mold and cast his own. He didn’t make them to re-sell them, he made them for his own use. He did the same with autos and trucks. A little paint and they looked as good as the original, especially when placed in the background of a scene.
Making a mold and casting for your own use should be OK, making them for resell would be illegal.
to further this…If you were to sell the original CD you purchased (protected under the “Right of First Sale” doctrine), you should destroy any copies you have.
The interesting twist to this, and something I’ve never understood in the context of the music issue, is that there apparently has never been a problem with going to the library, borrowing a CD of music and making a copy of it for my personal use. Yet if I make the CD available on a peer-to-peer network, that’s a problem. I don’t understand the difference. Maybe we should start a co-op/exchange for molds and castings? Something along the lines of a place to post and exchange things like “Anyone have a mold of retaining walls, or a coal load for a Stewart 3 bay hopper?” They ship you the mold, you use to make the pieces you need and then return it to the owner. Sort of a MRR Craigslist.
The only way I could see there to be a difference is that a library being a publically funded institution–through taxes et al–buys CD/DVD’s with the recognition that since they were bought with public funding therefore belongs to the public whereas a peer to peer network was perceived as a privately o/o outfit and therefore would be under a different set of rules as such.
That would be an interesting idea—but then, what with all the issues around peer to peer—I wonder how you’d get around that—[:-^]
I don’t think the music analogy really applies. In published music I am making one copy to listen to myself in a different media, i.e., from vinyl LP to mp3 so I can listen to the music in my car.
I can photocopy sheet music for my own use to mark up and highlight, for that matter - that’s legal.
But here we are making large numbers of these parts, like retaining walls or in the one example, coal loads. I’m no legal expert but to me, that’s clear intent to reproduce the manufacturer’s product and avoid paying for them.
George V.
This has been an are debated for years. In my former life working as an automotive parts buyer, we were very aware of counterfeit parts flooding the market. Basically a company could reverse engineer any auto part - for instance, a fender, and sell it under their own brand. It was, at the time legal providing it wasn’t sold as original equipment using the same logo and packaging of the original manufacturer. You see this all the time in auto supply stores with much of this type of material being manufactured off shore. Some auto companies have taken to licensing certain older model parts for the collector/restoration market which makes the production of the part perfectly legal.
In terms of music - someone brought that into the discussion, the copyright laws are pretty clear - if you need 100 copies, buying 1 and making 99 is illegal pure and simple. However, you can make 99 copies if you can show you have the original 99 on order. To my way of thinking, this is the same thing as buying the one coal load and casting 99 others - it affects a person’s ability to make a living. My rule of thumb is that if I have to ask myself ‘is this a legal copy’ then it probably isn’t.
One of my favorite cartoons is a picture of a guy standing in the church office listening to the receptionist tell him ‘our pastor is at a funeral, our youth director is at a retreat, and our choir director is in jail for breaking the copyright law.’
Sorry, but the RTV Rubber moldmaking materials and casting plastic or epoxy IS NOT CHEAP!
I just can’t see anyone making a killing replicating products and re-selling them. Being able to “work” with commercially available mold-making kits that are also sold at LHS’s or online Hobby sources on projects for your layout is not going to drag the Hobby down, people who whine and complain and make bad business decisions like not copyrighting their stuff are.
Some of us are looking for ways to stay active in the hobby and use the money we save for new things that are coming out. If I actually order and pay for coal loads for all of my RD4’s, Coalporters and Bethgons I will not have any money left over for tunnels or retaining walls.
Casting retaining walls for your layout from a master that either you made or taking a commercial wall and modified it and cast copies from the modified wall should be legal. Modifying the original is the key. More than likely the manufacture has copyrighted the product but not the pattern the product consists of. An example would be a brick sheet. Cutting windows and doors in it and casting some walls from it would not infringe in no way. But you will still have the brick pattern. Legally a company can sue an individual but in most cases the publicity for going after average Joe modeler for copyright infringement would not be beneficial for a few castings. Selling your infringed castings will get you in trouble fast. Even giving away for free would draw some ire from some companies.
Pete
After reading the OP I do not have to read any others. If you buy the part, use it to make the mold, duplicate the part using the mold made from someone elses work that is stealing.
If you make the model, use it to make the mold, and duplicate it that is the correct way to do it.
So imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery?
Micro-Mark has an old MR article on their site about casting techniques that has a disclaimer about duplicating parts: Making More Than One.
They say that it’s illegal to make duplicates to sell or give away, but stop short of giving the green light on copies for personal use. The author felt that since the bridge he was copying hadn’t been produced since 1950, there was no harm done.
I would hope that personal use falls under fair use, but copyright law is labyrinthine and sometimes counter-intuitive, so duplicate at your own risk, because you could end up sharing a cell with that choir director. [{(-_-)}]
Speaking of the recording industry–got me to a couplle of things—if one checks out the history of the blues musicians and early R and B you’ll find a lot of the record company histories were not so pure either when it came to violations of copyright even back then. But to top of the weirdness, sometime in the mid to late 1990’s we saw a slew of CD’s that popped up on the market that were “copyright protected” using certain codings and such. Some of the music on these CD’s would sound not quite right in that notes would be a quarter tone off. Then there were those lovely discs that would not play on your CD player-----even though you bought them legally[banghead][soapbox]
I think the biggest issue has become what to make of the small “cottage industry” caster/molder who is trying to make a living from this stuff in the first place. I had to deal with someone who was selling certain 6 axle trucksets that will eventually be installed on some kitbashed GMD1’s. He only had 3 sets and here I’m sitting on an order for about 12 more----and he couldn’t get them done----reason? He destroyed the molds because he thought they were done-----[soapbo
If someone were to produce their own castings,how would anyone know?Is there some secret covert basement inspectors going around?
All you need to do is take what ever it is your looking to make a casting of and search it for that little R inside a circle. That designates that item is trademarked and can not be reproduced, period end of story
I am looking at a card that held a Chooch random interconnecting wall p/n 8302 all I see in that little R inside the circle next to Chooch’s name or logo So you can’t make your own castings and call them Chooch castings as that would be stealing their name, but the actual casting itself does not have the circled R meaning “that” particular part has been trademarked and protected by law from being copied or reproduced. Think about how many tunnel portals and bridge abutment castings there are on the market I would venture to say none of them have trademarks on them as they are all merely scaled down reproductions of something that is pretty much a generic item. When ever a company like Atlas, BLI, Proto etc.for example makes a model of a UP locomotive they need to get permission to reproduce their logo why because it’s trademarked and that permission usually doesn’t come cheap, but if those same companies make a model of lets say the B&O, Western Maryland,Southern Pacific or any other fallen flag railroad whom are they going to have to buy that permission from no one as they have all gone out of business or been absorbed by other railroads.
If you feel like breaking out the magnifying glass and checking any of your locomotives or rolling stock etc. see if the circled R exists any where on the item if not from what we were told it’s pretty much fair game.
Now the monkey wrench thrown into the works is if MR were to do an article on making latex molds for castings to be used on your layout and they specifically said go by a Chooch Random Interconnecting Wall p/n 8302 an use it for your positive to make your mold then that would be a legal issue but the private person doing it for his own uses I seriously doubt a company would even bother trying to sue as it would cost the