I’m a member of the GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY and BNSF has been very good to us. When they were still BN they donated to us our flagship SD-45 # 400 " HUSTLE MUSTLE " an historic second generation 1st SD-45 produced by EMD. It has been updated and is used on our excursion train rides at our convevtions. They have also been very cooperative in letting us use their tracks for these runs. They are also working with us and WISCONSIN SOUTHERN RR to move the loco to a paint
facility for a repaint job that we are paying for to keep it fresh for photo runs and preservation. This shows that not all businesses are greedy about a few dollars. Maybe some of you might think about changing to GN, BN or BNSF for your modeling and rail fanning to support a business that supports us. Just a thought, but a positive note amongst all the negetive thoughts.
Ray — Great Northern fan.
P.S. – It only costs $25.00 per year to join GNRHS. If interested, e-mail me and I’ll e-mail you the information.
your lawyer will probably tell you that uttering a death threat in a public forum probably isn’t a good idea . if i was moderating this forum this thread would be deleted just for that comment , and you’d get an email with a serious warning . however i’m not the moderator , so have fun [}:)]
You asked if there are any lawyer/model railroaders…well sure there are. My dad for one, and I’m soon to be one (last year of law school).
But I’m afraid UP has a right to their name (gets a bit fuzzier dealing with the fallen flags they have absorbed). If MTH has not been following the well established licensing agreements that other manufactures in the hobby have respected, they should be found liable.
My guess is that most railroads (and other businesses) will eventually adopt similar licensing schemes. And as much as this stinks, companies should be able to protect their images, and name. And licensing agreements are probably the simplest way to accompli***his.
As a side note, the heritage units we all clamor over are a way UP is using the law to its advantage. It’s weak in my opinion but it is a way to preserve the rights over the fallen flags they have absorbed.
A lawyer? Who’s a lawyer? [:-^]
In order to join a class action suit, you’d have to have incurred damages. You would have to have actually bought one of the items for which a manufacturer is charging more for UP than another railroad. And those damages would have to be shown in court to have been the fault of the defendant. You would also have to show that those “monetary damages” were not legally the right of the defendant.
The concept of a licensing fee for the use of a name or company image is well established. It’s done all the time. You’re just annoyed because UP is exercising a legal right which it hasn’t done in the past. Your annoyance doesn’t count for much in a class action suit. Especially if the company you’re trying to sue is exercising a well established right. I would guess that no lawyer would bother with this.
(I’m not a lawyer, but this seems to me to be a reasonable analysis.)
-Ed
Sounds like you the usual guys who do not model UP complaining again. oh no an extra 5.00 bucks… on what a 5-7 hundred dollar steam engine please get over it.
Model railroading is exspensive all around.
Some of you people need to actually examine some facts before you start complaining about the big bad corporate meanie. And taking a minute to think it out wouldn’t hurt, either.
Unfortunately, not aggressively pursuing trademark infringement in one area weakens your ability to effectively protect it in other areas. Thank Congress for this - they made the changes to the copyright laws that caused all this.
For those crying “greedy! greedy!” about UPs licensing of their property - what a load of rubbish. Just a few hours of their attorneys’ time on this will eat up all their profit from it. It costs them more to license and police the use of their logos than they make on it, by far.
Student - as ereimer said, uttering death threats on a public forum is probably not a good idea. I think that falls under the heading of “terroristic threats,” and you could face some pretty intense scrutiny for it these days, at the least. I suggest thinking before posting in the future.
Not trying to flame - just pointing out a few facts and making a few observations.
U.P., Schmu Pee. I settled the problem and rather than use Union Pacific models, I model the Missouri Pacific BEFORE the merger, or rather, acquisition by UP. NO ONE wins in the long run with these lawsuits, except the lawyers. I’m still waiting for the FIRST judge sitting on the bench to, look over the top of his/her glasses at the participants in some of these cases, and say, “GET OUT OF MY COURTROOM WITH THIS CRAP!!! DISMISSED, WITH PREJUDICE!!”
[soapbox]
My [2c]
Well, I DO model the UP, and the UP fee is getting into my pocket in a big way, and I don’t like it! UP doesn’t need it, and I can’t afford it.
What you people don’t seem to come to grips with, is that this is hurting the entire model railroading hobby - every $5 I have to pay to UP for a “licensed” loco, is one less decal, one less bottle of paint, one less package of detail parts I can afford. The five bucks that UP is extorting from me could better be spent supporting another hobby-related business, most of which are small companies that really do need the money.
UP doesn’t HAVE to charge a licensing fee, they’re just doing because they found out they CAN. The amount of money UP will get from modelers in a year is a drop in the bucket compared to just an average day’s shipping revenues. It probably doesn’t even cover all the legal fees they’re running up by falling all over themselves suing everybody in sight.
If you’re someone living off a huge pension and modeling the 1930’s northeast, well OK then, maybe you really don’t care anything about this. But for the rest of us working stiffs…as someone who wants to model the contemporary northwestern US on a modest hobby budget with lots of other real-life obligations tugging on my wallet, this completely UNECESSARY extra fee they’re taking from modelers, that in no way returns to benefit the hobby, and that is also not actually adding anything significant to UP’s corporate bottom line, HURTS!
UP needs to start concentrating on getting thier 1:1 scale business straightened out, and quit screwing the model railroaders.
You mean. “Milking America”. Well milk you for every penney you got.
I propose that when we have an open house or show where we run our UP items that we bill UP an adversting fee. I feel this would only be proper and fair. I mean after all we are putting their name and logo before the purchasing public. Phil
It’s not just UP that’s doing this. I can see that they want to protect their trademark…and I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with some companies that go beyond that. Take a look at any Chevy, Pontiac, or GMC model kit to see what I mean. Not only does GM protect its logo, the car name, but they even go so far as to protect the body style as well! Overboard? I think so. It’s all about money, folks. They do it because they can get away with it. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the industry starts doing the same thing. With that said, I don’t let it bug me. Without the licensing agreements, we’d have a seriously small selection of models to play with.
I fully agree that UP has a right to protect their trademark. A basic low-cost licesne fee is one thing, howerver. According to the one UP/MTH article, UP also wants information on your marketing budget and manufacturing details. Don’t you think the fee and seeing the final product would be enough to see that the UP trademark is being properly used? Why all the other busness disclosure?
–Randy
The purpose of what is happening with UP and other railroads is that their Intellectual Property lawyers have to justify their existence on the annual P&L statement. “See! We saved you six million dollars in diminished I.P. value by sueing that mom&pop operation into oblivion!” Of course it’s all intangible, but that is how the game is played.
If they were truely concerned about protecting the quality and use of their trademarks, they’d charge something like $1,000 per year to cover the program’s administrative costs and be done with it.
Demanding the right to crawl through a licensee’s books and take “a piece of the action” is absolutely profit motivated and with the incredible disparity between UPs cashflow doing what they’re actually in business to do and what they get from licensing to the hobby industry are the principle reasons that it irritates people actually in the hobby.
It truely is like taking kid’s lunch money.
I’m convinced. UP has really ticked me off. Starting now I am not going to ride any UP passenger trains nor am I going to ship things via UP. If we all do this, then we’ll see things change.
Every company has the right to protect its name. For example, if I decided to get into the scale model laser kit business and produced a model of a building and called it an MTH factory, complete with MTH logos on signs and billboards of actual MTH products, I would anticipate a polite cease and desist letter. No business can expect to profit from the name of another individual or company without compensation or agreement. Some companies have traditionally been very aggressive about this, others less so. Model RR manufacturers have seemingly been able to profit from producing the names and likeness of the railroads for decades without compensation to the brand owners. I don’t blame the RR’s at all, I am more amazed that things went on for so long without this happening.
As I recall in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s a bridge colapsed in West Virginia or Ohio. The bridge was about 100 years old, long past any real or implied warantee. United States Steel was sued sucessfully not because they had supplied the steel involved in the original construction of the bridge, which they had not, but rather for an advertising slogan used by USS at the time, “We’re involved”. Not long after this USS became an “energy” company, abandoning their traditional steel business.
The point is that the UP licensing extends the implied liability for poor product not only to just the manufacturer, but also to the licensing company, in this case UP. Before anyone gets too excited by this possibility, pause to think it through like a lawyer. The best defensive position in this instance is to protect the Trademark by refusing to grant any licensing use at all, thus no UP decorated loco’s, rolling stock, or structures. By extension would CSX, GE or EMD be far behind? What would happen to the models we all love?
As I commented in another topic, this is one of those hard choices, MTH or UP. A real lose lose situation.
My [2c]
Will
The end of a lawsuit against the train mfg’s wouldn’t be a $5 drop in the price of UP stuff, It would be a $5 increase on all other road names so they could say “see? we’re not charging more for UP stuff.”
I’m sure that days not far off.
I heard a lawyer on the radio tell a guy to get a gun, go into court and shoot his ex wife, her lawyer and the judge in the case for being stupid. I FREAKED when I heard this on the radio!
The UP has the right to do that. However I have the right not to pay it!
I do not model the UP. And I will not be adding any UP equipment to my layout!
If the UP wants royalties, they wont be getting them from me!
Personally I think it is all about greed. The UP is looking at us as a cash cow. Its true that it may only be a couple of bucks now, but it will more than likly go up.