Union Pacific not a scrooge

No plans on cutting back the employee abuse, I see.

How many billions for exec bonuses?

So, what's your job description?

Texas Pete

UP will just keep hiring goons to try and try and try. Meanwhile it is BOHICA.

You got it. Soon they will charge for taking pictures of their trains.

Apparently, their experience wasn't very extensive, because at least one trademark protection resource I've read highly discourages "blanket" licensing, as it can cause problems later on if an infringing item needs to be dealt with through the court system...

And yours is??????????

to be for the Rio Grande):< As the referenced site has the statement; "An office action making FINAL a refusal to register the mark has been mailed" Does this mean UP can still appeal or does FINAL mean FINAL?

logo on "toy model train sets", the fact is that the UP does no such thing.< To prevent the UP from using the name on other "fallen flags" couldn't one simple use an old Lionel (or American Flyer) catalog (say for the '40s or '50s) to show "train sets" for most all of what UP claims? Maybe even the current UP emblems?????

USE the trademark in commerce on the products it specifies in the application< OR does charging 'for the use of' define commerce??????

Perhaps not, Sean, but it it's so f'n unimportant why are the UP lawyers and bean counters taking time out from playing "Switch!" to diddle with it?

wouldn't have to worry about complaints from the t-shirt and hat merchants.<

This again shows that the UP is attempting to actually make money from doing this and not just protecting trademarks.

A degree in sales & marketing, plus hearing the opinion of my brother, a Dallas private attorney who has done some work specifically on trademarks/copywrite/trade dress.

Kent in SD

A wonder you'd admit it!

Well if you can get a degree in underwater basket weaving, I guess you could get one in sales & marketing. In my day, we had degrees in things like economics, physics, medicine, business administration, music, engineering (that's designing things, not running trains), history, political science, chemistry, etc.

Sales & marketing sounds more like a career choice than something one could get a degree in.

But we'll let that go.

The point is that UP is actually playing the part of Scrooge pretty damn well. Treating modelers as:

"Loathesome inexplicable creatures, good for nothing kickable creatures"

To quite from the Albert Finney version.

Regards,

DAve

Because if they don't enforce their trademark consistently, it makes it that much more difficult to prove damages when an infringement comes up... such as a music video filmed at a RR museum, filled with UP trademarks, and special effects showing the "artist" using UP locomotives to destroy and kill everything in his path.

Because they're trying to show a modicum of reasonableness. And, they know that it's nearly impossible for them to nail the little guy. They want the Athearns, Walthers, etc. to pay up.

They would like to nail me as well, if I was of the mind to run a pile of decals and sell them to my local club or friends. But, there's no money in bashing the little guy. Nor, is there any PR when you go after the retired guy enjoying his hobby. You think UP would relish going after, say Rich Meyer's widow and daughter (at Champ Decals) over this? They'd be right, but in the court of public opinion, they'd be killed. And NO, they aren't as far as I know.

Kennedy

I don't think this was ever answered on the group talking about the licensing issue either. SOmebody did venture that there could be grounds to stop this sort of thing, but nobody who'd really knows has spoken up.

I remember thinking of the Walthers "FedUPs" package van and parcel depot they were selling. Depending on how you cut the decals and how you painted the van, you could do a UPS delivery van even though UPS refused to license that....

My guess would be that folks like Champ and Microscale will sell their decals under whatever premises they will do, and those of us who spend their time on Undecs will only pay the extra on the decal, and not the model.

Though I do remember the gyrations Tom Stolte of Oddball Decals went through when this first came out. I think he changed his prices 2-3 times in a week to find a happy medium!

:D

Kennedy

I seem to recall that one of the provisions is that if your sales are over the free ride limit, you have to have your books audited and certified copy of the report has to be sent to UP with the payment.....

Kennedy

The best thing that can be done on these applications is to file the objections to them based on how the application is written. In this case, somebody needs to point out they're not using the trademark as stated (as they aren't in the business), or perhaps somebody else has prior use, or whatever. A lot of these applications pass because the PTO doesn't have the wherewithal to dig into the weeds to root out all this stuff. See the MTH DCC Back EMF patent to-do.

Those of us who have the information and the ability to make that information available to somebody to fight stuff like this ought to do so. At least to somebody who can file the objections backed up with facts. That's why Stan Ames was looking for older DCC info so they can fight the MTH thing.

Kennedy

Sales and marketing?! They sell those on matchbooks. And what else, you watched the peoples court once? What a joke.

I see that now the Christmas elves are gone they've been replaced by the same old trolls.

Kent in SD