1/350 scale ships - trumpeter? copies?

Hi all,

Was at the local hobby shop the other day and saw a 1/350 Enterprise (nuke) from some unknown company (mini-hobbies or something like that?). Talking to the guys at the shop the general consensus is that it's a copy of the Tamiya kit. Anybody know anything about this kit?

Also - was looking at the trumpeter upcoming ship list in 1/350 and saw the Bismark, Missouri etc. Wondering the same thing - are these copies?

Thanks, Rob

Reply to
Flindor
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Mini-Hobbies has made some low quality knockoffs of better quality kits. The consensus is that their knock offs have softer detail.

The trumpeter kits are much higher quality, Their 1/350 carriers have generally had rave reviews except for an unfortunate error on the Hornet with a too fat bow. They have an incredibly ambitious release schedule.

Reply to
Bradford Chaucer

Claus:

No way.

This is not my reading of Trumpeter. They started a few years ago with obvious copies of of Tamiya 1/350th battleships. Even the box artwork was copied exactly from Tamiya. No clarification was ever made to customers on whether they were pirate rip offs or legit licensed models from Tamiya, so I assume they were pirated.

The stores all stocked these kits, because they were cheaper then Tamiya. This also is questionable ethics, so I do not let the hobby stores off the hook.

Trumpeter sold these Tamiya copies to millions of Chinese kids starved for nice kits. This created the knowledge and capital base for them to now produce the Essex and Hornet kits that have been praised so highly here.

I feel this praise is misplaced since the money to finance the new kits has a smell to it. Unfortunately, I too am tempted by their newer kits and have bought two, the P-51D in 1/24th and the F-107 in 1/72nd. Also in my stash is a Trumpeter 1/350th Arizona, an obvious Revell inspired kit. We all do the same in Wal-Mat when we buy Chinese goods there.

Suspicious were the original Academy kits from Korea, and look at Academy today, a major player in this industry. So perhaps as indivduals it is beyond our control to only purchase virtuous kits. The system is the failure, allowing the Chinese to get away with it, and it is too difficult for us as consumers to buy responsibly. If Tamiya, a supposed rich and prosperous firm, is unwilling to take the Chinese on in international copyright courts, then why should I sweat it? Good question.

So my thinking is beginning to change and I may be more likely to go ahead and buy the USS Essex from Trumpeter, thinking along the lines of, "It is not my problem if nobody else cares either."

But don't even think of copying my mortgage backed securities analysis software that has taken 10 years to write up to this point. My last lawyers, Holland and Hart, in Denver, are just a phone call away. .....

..../V

Reply to
Vess Irvine

I believe that anyone who has been following the efforts of the music and computer software industries to bring the Chinese to court for violations of the intellectual property rights rules will tell you that Tamiya hasn't a ghost of a chance making a case. If the big boys in the music/video/software industries can't get any where, what chance has a small plastic model company. The Chinese consider such things as a joke and as long as the boys in Washington don't seriously raise the issue, it is dead in the water. The boys in Washington are either getting Chinese Political contributions under the table (Democrats) or have big financial supporters in this country who don't want anything to jeopardize their access to China's huge pool of semi slave labor (Republicans) so entrepreneurs in the free world will just have to live with this kind of thing.

Bill Shuey in full cynical mode

Reply to
William H. Shuey

Hi Bill:

But we do not have to buy Trumpeter kits, if only the buying public was aware. Most are not. They see the low price tag and go for it. And the irony is the new Trumpeter kits are tempting, whether designed with funnny money or not. That is the hard nut to swallow, cause I would like to buy the USS Essex. .../V

P.S. Who would want a Democrat handed to them under a table? LOL.

Reply to
Vess Irvine

"Vess Irvine" wrote

But the absence of comment from Tamiya says something loud as well. You don't block your legitimate business partners from selling, now do you?

Actually Stevens probably doesn't know dick. The only voice that really matters is Tamiya's.

KL

Reply to
Kurt Laughlin

Now look what you have done....

Reply to
David Amos

You have to bribe the Democrats to keep quiet? I thought that was just what they did these days.

Dick Cheny: Hi! I thought I'd give a couple of multi-billion dollar government contracts to Halliburton, my former company in which (despite laws to the contrary) I still have significant financial interests and from which I still recieve a million dollars a year in Br.., I mean, consulting fees! And since I didn't put any kind of competitive tender on them, I'm guessing you guys are going to be pretty mad and stomp up and down on CNN!

Democratic Party: Nosir. Would you like a Sandwich?

George W Bush: Hi! I invaded Afghanistan on the pretense of capturing Osama Bin Laden, but he's still free and indulging his passion for hillwalking. Then I invaded Iraq on the pretense of finding Saddam Hussain's weapons of mass destruction ... but it seems like he never had any after all! You guys are probably going to try and get me impeached over this, aren't you?

Democratic Part: Nosir. Can I get you some coffee?

Reply to
Matt

My uninformed two cents worth: It's my understanding that you cannot copyright a fact. Therefore if company X makes a VERY similar model of the 1/48 Farley Fruitbat in 1/48, copyright infringement is hard to prove. You just move the pieces around on the sprue, and you're pretty much free and clear. Also, although we think of Tamiya, etc as giants, in the corporate scheme of things they are not that big, and may not want to incur the legal expenses. Kim M

Operation American Freedom-Where is our regime change?

Reply to
Royabulgaf

No, that is more or less true (especially with most Asian countries in particular). BUT what normally does happen is that the copyright holder of the original hauls them into court for unlicensed use of images and logos.

This has been happening with cars and many railroads (CSX was the first one to sue over unreimbursed use of corporate logos, and from what I recall they won at least royalties for it.)

McDonalds -- in a legendary case -- nailed Lifelike less than 24 hours after they released a kit of a first-generation "Golden Arches" stand and forced it off the market (Lifelike refused to pay royalties to Mickey D's).

Items in the public domain -- like famous warships -- are harder to prove even with verbatim copies of the sprues.

But as is evidenced here, it only takes most modelers one experience with building a Grade Z knockoff of a Tamiya or other well-known kit to never want to do that again regardless of price.

Cookie Sewell AMPS

Reply to
AMPSOne

But a model kit is not just a fact (if indeed it is a fact). It's an interpretation of the subject, and it has it's own characteristics such as parts breakdown.

An analogy could be found in the copyrighting of road maps. These too are a scale representation of reality, but they are copyrighted, and map makers are known to introduce subtle "errors" such as little road wiggles, mispellings, or fictitious place names so that infringing copies can be proven.

Reply to
Rick DeNatale

Cookie,

It wasn't CSX that went after the model RR industry, but rather one of their predecessors, Chessie System (or C&O/B&O Railroad), over the use of the "Chessie Cat" herald. Virtually overnite, the entire model RR industry quietly dropped all C&O, B&O and Chessie system loco's, cars, and decals. The end-result? Chessie settled for "right of approval", as opposed to royalties, and I believe that it remains that way today.

As for the LifeLike McDonald's restaurant model kit, yes, they got slapped down by McDonald's (they just never bothered to read the restaurant trade press, where the biggies regularly print their trademarks and copyrights, and the penalties of infringement of same). However, they did settle up with McDonald's, as that building kit has been available now for years, off and on.

Actually, very few US-built vehicles, aircraft or ship designs, names, etc., are in the public domain. All you need do is check to see who claims reproduction rights to virtually the entire list of US Navy ships built since

1930, same with aircraft, even most US Army vehicles built since 1940. For licensors of ships and aircraft, try Northrop-Grumman and Boeing.

For automakers, it goes a bit deeper, due to the replacement parts biz. If any carmaker is to protect their designs and trademarks (marques, body and trim level names are trademarked and copyrighted), against being ripped off in the replacement parts market, they must also protect those names in all forms of marketing, including toys and model kits.

I know that this sort of licensing maze isn't what modelers like to hear, but there is an up-side: More and more, the licensors, particularly in aircraft and auto's, are requiring the model (or even a diecast!) to be accurately represented, often to the point of being pretty nit-picky. As I work with licensors regularly, I am seeing this quite a bit anymore. Not a bad thing, it seems to me, as long as they are consistent with those requirements.

Art Anderson

Reply to
EmilA1944

Reply to
The Federhofers

the only kit that trumpeter copied is the BWN Hornet kit. Some parts that BWN used to help MFG the kit were copied on the trumpeter kit.

Mike

Reply to
MBishop446

They may or may not have copied some Tamiya kits at first, however that didn't steal the molds they ave made the molds for the new kits from scratch. I understand that their A10 kit utilized some parts from Tamiya when Tamiya abandoned the product half designed, so they may have bought out those parts.

Not entirely true. The Banner kit (which Trumpeter bought out) was "inspired" by the Revell kit but was decidedly not a pantograph job. I Have directly compared both and it is apparant that they did redesign though they also used some techniques that Revell did (like the wedding cake tier constructions) However they also corrected many errors in the Revell kit. If anything they copied barts from the old Tom's Modelworks 1/350 Resin Arizona kit.

Or from a more shady beginning they are becomming an honnest and decent model kit producer which should be encouraged. After all we forgave the Kennedys for the sins of their bootlegging father!!

Reply to
Bradford Chaucer

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