Union Pacific Sues Athearn & Lionel

On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 05:09:22 -0500, "Jim Hill" purred:
I can do the research but I would charge my old rates =^-^= I have been out of the practice for a few years and I was never a specialist in those tangled areas. At present I know a great deal more about copyright law than I did while practicing, as a result of having to protect a number of my own copyrights (and I am active in an international professional mail list on copyright law). If I had trademarks of my own I would possibly be fully up to speed on this specific area. As it is I opine from a combination of education, practice, and following the issues. At present I employ a specialty attorney for my copyright issues as he is more expert than I. He could answer the UP questions but such expertise is not free, so I am not asking =^-^=. Possibly a librarian can help you find the citations as they are public record.
Yes I would like that link. It is amazing that any modern company could realistically believe that model railroad licensing could have the slightest positive on their bottom line.
It might be a good idea but I doubt a company that large would choose to get into such a (by their standards) low profit business.
cat

Yep. But just one among many, and the only reason it raised such a stink was that time the rich bastard whose expensive and flashy lawyer got him off (with help from a nearly neo- Nazi cop) happened to be black.

PS - grease up your sweater and it won't shrink either!
(not to mention the meat substrate)

"Donald Kinney" wrote in message You are correct Donald, by US standards, both Lionel and Athearn would fit the definition of a small business.

That and the fact the prosecutors seemed to make endless mistakes. 1. Bring in Kato as a prosecuting witness, the guy turns "dumb surfer" on them and he is treated as a hostile witness and narrows the window of opportunity to a point where OJ might NOT have had enough time to commit the crime.
2. Have OJ try on the glove and then realise that OJ has incredibly large hands and the glove is no where near big enough.
3. Send the Coronor to OJ's place FIRST, and then the crime scene????
4. Have it appear that OJ went down his neighbour's driveway to the back of his estate and drop a glove on the ground, yet supposedly wrap up the knife in plastic and dispose of it somewhere either at one of the airports. Why would he not just put the glove in the same bag???
5. What happened to the statement from OJ's daughter about hearing Spanish voices arguing, outside the window at her mother's condo, around the same time as the murder was supposed to be commited?
That whole trial was like a group of professionals defending against a team of first year students prosecuting.

Ahh yes the glories and pitfalls of new product design. The make or break decision for many a corporation. Design the right product, first, and your corporation can own the world wide market for generations (Boeing and jetliners, EMD and diesel locomotives, IBM and the 360, Henry Ford and the Model T, Microsoft and Windows, Xerox and the Xerox). Screw it up and you get the Edsel, Iridium , and a host of other forgotten products, zillions of dollars of R&D funding down the drain, and corporate extinction (DEC, Wang, Prime, Polaroid, and Data General come immediately to mind). The right product is a compromise between what's doable, what the customer wants, and what the customer is willing to pay to get what he wants. To this discussion neither bean counters nor lawyers have much of value to contribute. A real salesman (a man who has face to face experience with real customers) can sometimes be useful. A good new product often needs little advertising and promotion, if it fills a real need, customers will hear about it.
Effective PR by Athearn or Lionel could make UP into a laughing stock for years.
Somehow I don't think a $5 Athearn blue box kit can stand an additional $5 royalty. I suppose locomotives might be able to do $5 but its too much for just plain cars.
David J. Starr

There was also a lot of stuff the jury DIDN'T hear.

in article LQEwc.11336$ snipped-for-privacy@read2.cgocable.net, snipped-for-privacy@Credit.Valley.Railway at snipped-for-privacy@Credit.Valley.Railway wrote on 6/6/04 6:18 AM:
And that's at least part of the reason OJ was acquitted: prosecutors and police departments get used to trying poor people defended by public defenders and they get sloppy. The prosecution must PROVE the case. They mishandled evidence, didn't prep witnesses correctly, and generally acted like amateurs. The defense opened up every hole they could think of which is their job.
I've seen it in other cases, too: Scott Peterson may be acquitted because the Modesto police apparently decided he did it from the get go and followed no other leads. I've seen FBI cases (think of the incorrect accusation of the Atlanta Bomber) when they get their teeth into it and facts no longer matter: it is testosterone driven winning that matters.
Ed

On 6/6/04 2:25 AM, in article snipped-for-privacy@netnews.comcast.net, "Steve Caple" wrote:
There is a HUGE difference between CRIMINAL cases (like the OJ affair) and CIVIL cases, like the UP suit.
In a CRIMINAL case, for instance, you must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a CIVIL case, the burden is merely the preponderance of evidence.
And OJ WAS found guilty in the civil suit, which is why he had to hide his Heisman trophy.

Well, if the couple of UP fans that are left want it, they should pay for it. I say UP should make it $5.00 "per logo" so they can ake a profit. That would be $10.00 per car, 2 sides.

Most of it would go to boosting the OJ side of the case.

His defense team successfully kept the most laughable evidence in front of the jury. The prosecution very nimbly botched their presentations. Hadn't anyone on the prosecution team ever put on a pair of tight fitting gloves before? It's even easier to make that tight fit NOT fit wearing sugical gloves. What the jury got to see wasn't very compelling. What was shown on TV and reported on in other media was much more compelling.
Paul

If the UP loses their case will they have to hide their Harriman Award?

It would be interesting to note if any of OJ's DNA was found inside the glove.....

The royalty is .5% of everything (wholesale) or 3% of the wholesale price of UP logo'd product manufactured (by there definition which includes new and old UP and all the acquired road names as well).
So on a $5 blue box, that's 2.5 cents; or 15 cents.
I still think what Athearn and Lionel are worried about is UP's ability to veto or suspect a UP logo'd product even to the extent of confiscating the molds (don't know if that part is actually true) and for A & L to acknowledge Ups right to license old UP and fallen flag logo's, too. I think they might pay, or at least negotiate, for UP's new logos, like the American flag thingy. Clearly Athearn at least made some agreements with Coca Cola, John Deere et al.
Next interesting question: I suspect the model manufacturers have never paid a dime for using GM, Baldwin, etc. loco designs, either. I suspect those are all protected (especially the new ones) with copyright at least. Car manufacturers protect their stuff, so it is difficult to legally make a fiberglass, volkwagon powered Ferrari knockoff. Might GM come knocking, next?
WRT payment required for licensing logos otherwise the court might decide that they have no value and hence anyone can use them: if UP wanted to license them for no fee to certain users (like Athearn et al), they could set it up as a marketing campaign with advertising fees offsetting the licensing fee.
Ed
in article xVGwc.11430$ snipped-for-privacy@read2.cgocable.net, snipped-for-privacy@Credit.Valley.Railway at snipped-for-privacy@Credit.Valley.Railway wrote on 6/6/04 8:40 AM:

A very, VERY arguable statement. EMD did not "own the worldwide market", for even one generation.

I think that you need to look a bit deeper into aviation history. :o)) Boeing were not first with a jet airliner by a long way. That honour went to deHavilland with the Comet. Boeing profited from the knowledge of metal fatigue that deHavilland found out the hard way. The Comet was the right product, produced first - had deHavilland not tried to give the passengers such a great view out of square windows then they, and not Boeing, might have owned the world of jet airliners.
David J. Starr wrote: snip snip

Religion, politics and economics? What about sex? ;-{)

I find it hard to belive that ANY court or jury would decide that Union Pacific's logo has no value.
[That sounds like wishful thinking on behalf of someone who doesn't want to pay the fee.]