Union Pacific Sues Athearn & Lionel

My comment was in response to another poster who said that trademark rules REQUIRED that a license involve a charge, otherwise, the trademark will be deemed to have no value in future litigation. I was just proposing a way to allow Athearn, Lionel, UP et al to value the trademarks use by model railroad manufacturers, and for UP to acknowledge the marketing value of their being used. Sounds like a wash to me.

But that only depends upon the fantasy that UP actually wants to reach an agreement and doesn't really intend to make money on licensing to MR manufacturers. If it is a profit center, or seen to be one, then they will insist on charging and controlling.

Ed

in article BoMwc.3786$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com, Mark Mathu at snipped-for-privacy@mathu.com wrote on 6/6/04 2:54 PM:

all right, I exaggerate a bit. But EMD did own the North American market from the 1940's up until GE finally became competitive. They had a good 30 or more years and the North American market is very large. EMD was first, they had product out there before WWII, whereas after WWII broke out, the War Production Board told the traditional steam locomotive companies (Baldwin and Alco) not to mess around with new designs, but to just crank out as many steamers as they could. EMD had all the war years to get the new design teething troubles behind them. When the war was over and everyone started making diesels, the EMD ones were more reliable because they had been in production for nearly 10 years whereas Alco and GE and Fairbanks Morse were starting from scratch. While the competition was debugging new designs, EMD was selling product. Being first counts for a lot.

David Starr

I am aware of the Comet and the crashes that were attributed to metal fatigue. I don't know just why deHavilland was unable to recover their lead. If memory serves the Comet flew in the very early 1950's, a good

5 years before the 707 in '57. That gave them 5 years to lick the problem and get on with it before Boeing got their plane into the air. For some reason this did not happen. It might be that deHavilland ran out of money, or maybe the the economics of the Comet weren't good enough to compete with things like the DC-6. But any way you slice it, the Comet wasn't the right product at the right time, and the 707 was.

David J. Starr

The Comet had a smaller cabin and held fewer passengers as well. Economics being what they are, the Boeing design "took off" while DeHaviland (and other European) designs did not (until the advent of Airbus).

You exaggerate a lot. Many countries fully dieselised without ever buying any locomotives from EMD.

The situation during WW2 was more complicated than that you describe, but I would certainly attribute a part of EMD's success to the intervention of the W.P.B. You might note that while EMD were making cab-units, it was Alco-GE who were making the running with road switchers.

I would hardly describe either Alco or GE as "starting from scratch". And from what I read, and have been told by blokes who ran or maintained them, the early EMD products were not without their idiosyncrasies.

Agreed. But like another example you mentioned, EMD's product was not neccesarily the best on the market.

David,

Alco cranked out more that steam in WWII. The War Production Board did have EMD produce on FT locomotives. Why? - They had the only production road freight diesel available! EMD cound not produce SW1 or NW2 switchers; Alco was tapped to build S-2 switchers. Alco was allowed to finish up an order of

60 DL109's for the NH as they were expected to be used in a 'dual service' role. Alco and EMD were not allowed to produce any more passenger engines after they filled those late 1941 orders. Baldwin had no road diesels available at the time, and FM had not entered the market(they were tied up producing the OP engine for marine applications). By 1944, Alco had received permission to produce a 'test bed' unit(the ABA 'Black Maria' set). Going into 1945 many of the production limitations were being cut back, though some materials were still in short supply. The 'edge' that EMD had in diesel production was really limited to those FT road freighters, and was only for about 2+ years. EMD was already a powerhouse in diesel production before the war, and had a lead in road engines before the war. The war production board just allowed EMD to hold that lead. The point is that there really was no competion for road freight engines - And after the war Alco had non-stop problems with the 244 series prime mover.

Jim Bernier

"David J. Starr" wrote:

Add to that the fact that EMD did not make steam engines where as, Baldwin, Lima and Alco could! If EMD had a steam locomotive producion line in place in 1941, they would have made steam engines during the war. They didn't, so they didn't. The others did, so they did.

Regards,

DAve

Oh, it is so simple. Who in their right mind would fly in a DeHaviland airplane after the Comet crashes???? The crashes had already doomed DeHaviland even if they had fixed the problems.

Pity. They were cool looking aircraft. Then again, had jets taken off in the early 1950s instead of later with the 707, train travel would have died off all that much faster.

Regards,

DAve

In the sense that they had more of it than any other locomotive manufacturer they did. I have seen precious few English. French, Japanese or German locomotives on this side of the Atlantic. The Germans tried to make a go of it back in '62, but failed. You seem to have quite a preponderance of Clyde-built EMD units in your neck of the woods too, I might add. Especially in the domain of large interstate locomotives. Do you want to argue that those are not "really" EMDs? Oh sure you have other manufacturers, but if you disallow Goninan (Alco), Goodwin (GE) and Comeng (Alco) then you are left with a stable full of the little guys, of which the four EE-built class Z machines are among the largest. Four is not a very large number even in the locomotive business. The number of Clyde-built class G is alone equal to almost the total of all units built by EE in Oz. EMD built, or licensed locomotives built on EMD designs, operate in almost every country in the free world that has railways. You can argue if you so choose, but you are in for a long uphill slog of it. No other locomotive manufacturer has the degree of EMDs worldwide usage. For that matter Hammersly didn't even bother with Clyde, electing instead to import their machines directly from La Grange built to North American standards.

Alas EMD may soon become a legend of the past. It seems the foolish people who control General Motors think that locomotive building is not their "core business". After seventy years of building the world's best locomotives, they think it is not their business. Remarkable. Regrettable as well, as the locomotives were always far, far superior to the automobiles they built. I wouldn't own a Chevrolet (Shevalay) unless there was nothing else I could get, but I wouldn't trade an SD40-2 for a dozen U-33C dirtbags.

Captain Handbrake

Not for long. They would have been the first large producer of the machines, but until the Airbus came along there was no European manufacturer that could make aircraft large enough to accommodate the North American needs. The Comet was a terrific airplane. So was the French Caravelle. So was the Vickers VIscount. I have flown many miles in all three and I liked them very much. They just simply were too small to operate profitably in N.A. as well as much of the rest of the world. No argument, however, that the Comet got a raw deal. It really was a quite excellent aircraft once the window issue was fixed.

Captain Handbrake

That's as may be. But that's more a question of definition, and your limited knowledge of the market. Since when did your side of the Atlantic constitute the world-wide market? Why do you ignore the considerable number of non-EMD and non-US built locos in Central and South America?

My statement was quite specific - I wrote that many countries railways fully dieselised without ever buying any locomotives from EMD. On my own railway, dieselisation was completed with a predominantly Alco roster - the EMD component was small by comparison. Six 42s, ten 421s, and eighteen 49s, versus 350+ Alcos. The SAR had no EMDs at all during dieselisation. Nor did the TGR. The big purchaser of of EMDs was the VR, followed by QR and WAGR, both of whom were also big purchasers of EE power.

During the period of dieselisation, Goninan were mainly a rollingstock builder, they did not act as licensees for Alco. A.E. Goodwin were the Alco licensee, Comeng only took up the license after Goodwin's went out of business, and the 80 class contract was in the offing. You need to get a much more reliable source of information if you want me to take your claims seriously.

What complete and utter nonsense! Where did you get your bodgy figures from? Without going to any great trouble to find a specific number, I can tell you EE built about 175-odd locos for QR alone. How many Gs are there again? Until ANR took over operations in Tasmania, the only locos they had were from EE and other UK builders - up until then they had a few more than 4 Z class locos.

I will argue, since you can only sustain your argument by adding qualifiers such as that above, limiting the discussion to countries in the so-called free world. Otherwise your case falls flat. The OP I was initially responding to made no such qualifications, he simply asserted that EMD had the bulk of the world market. Not true. Even if I accept your attempt to limit the discussion to the "free world", your argument stills falls flat. The UK is a prime example. During dieselisation, they had how many EMDs?

That is only true if we adopt your definition of worldwide.

I have never owned a motor car built by GM, so I cannot comment on their quality. I have spent many hours operating and maintaining locomotives built by Clyde-GM-EMD - and as a consequence I hate the friggen things.

Or maybe Coca Cola and John Deere understand that toys and models are very low-cost advertising . Especially when the toy-maker actually pays for the privilege. And then the customer pays the toy-maker a premium for "authentic, licensed" product.

I'm pretty sure the whole UP protect-our-trademarks thing originated with some tight-arsed, careerist MBA trying to make a name for him/herself.

They may have been diligent in their protection of the marks for a long time and Athearn, et al, didn't have a problem with their continued protection efforts. Unlike UP which seems to have gotten a bug up their collective butt very recently.

No doubt some ladder climber has championed this effort in order to accomplish some agenda. The legal team trying to justify their existance?

Paul

Perhaps they lunch with the UP legal staff??

Paul

What some may not know is that Coca-Cola collecting is a big hobby in itself, as is John Deere collecting and others as well. I know one fellow here in my town who collects David Brown tractors. Not models, but actual tractors. Ah, but I digress. Ertl and others have made a fortune from these collectors by making models of "collectable" trade and service marked items.

People collect Deere "memorabilia". A John Deere tractor or hay mower is a distinctive and unique piece of machinery not duplicated by any other manufacturer. It is distinctively "John Deere". There is no New Holland or Massey-Furguson hay mower exactly like a John Deere hay mower.

The hobby of model railroading is quite another matter. I do not know of anyone in the model railroading hobby who is a collector of the same sort of Union Pacific memorabilia; mainly because a UP SD 40 is no different than a thousand other SD

40s painted in a rainbow of railroad liveries. For other than a thin coating of some toxic chemicals it is unidentifiable from any other similar machine belonging to any of a number of owners.

If ANY company has ANY right to seek licensing in that arena it is firstly EMD. That being said, I don't hold that EMD has any right to allow or prohibit anyone from making scale models or toys of EMD products.

No doubt.

Captain Handbrake

[snip]

Not into plastic model car building, but I seem to recall that GM requires or did require a license to manufacture any models of any of its automobiles. Whether this is a mere formality or one requiring a fee, I don't know.

Ray H.

I don't think the problem is with "making" things like model trains or T-shirts or coffee mugs. It's with selling them. If the items bear a registered trademark then that belongs to someone who can collect for the use of the trademark. If it hasn't been neglected for a long time. The problem with many of the UP owned tradmarks is that they ignored the protection of them for a very long time. They, apparently, woke up one morning and decided they should start defending and protecting.

Paul

And then there's UPS which I understand came down like a ton of bricks hard on anybody that tried to release models of their trucks, though I believe I've heard that some approved models have shown up on the market recently ?

I liked the model delivery trucks labeled FedUP.

Ed

in article snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com, Rick Jones at snipped-for-privacy@extra.ev.net wrote on 6/7/04 3:03 PM: