Re: Legal Stuff (was: [OFFICIAL] FALLOUT 4 (June 99))

Buddy Chamberlain wrote:

> Ok, I was just curious, and a bit concerned.	I've grown up in the
computer
> industry, so I'm used to patents and copyrights and any supposed
> infringement thereof as being the sparks for nice fat lawsuits.  :o) 
My
> only concern was that eidos might have the actual appearance of Lora
Croft
> copyrighted (in fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't), and thus
making a
> miniature witha  similar appearance would border on infringement.  I'm
just
> a concerned fan, that's all.

Eidos certainly have Lara's image copyrighted (I used to work for Eidos
until
my company bought ourselves back from the Eidos Empire and know how
'protective' Ian Livingstone is of their creation). I wouldn't presume
to speak
for Jon T, but I guess his attitude is similar to ours in that we know
we're
sailing pretty close to the copyright wind with some of our models, but
we're
careful to avoid drawing attention to ourselves by not advertising the
models
as Lara Croft, Barb Wire or in our case X-Wings, TIE Fighters etc.
Instead
you'll find such items as 'Heavy Two-Man Fighter' (Y-Wing), 'X-Foil Four
Engined Fighter' (X-Wing), 'Fast Fighter' (A-Wing) listed in our
catalogue. You
won't find any pictures of these particular models on our website or in
the
catalogue either. And after that we pretty much just hope that no-one
from
LucasArts will notice an operation as small as us ! I know that one or
two
small operations who produce fantasy or SF collector's figures have had
copyright troubles and the extent of the action taken by the film
companies has
been to slap 'cease-and-desist' letters on them, effectively saying
don't do it
any more, take the models off the market and that will be the end of the
matter. I guess they realise that sueing a small operation isn't cost
effective
(the total assets of Brigade Models would barely make it worth Lucas'
lawyers
getting out of bed in the morning) and could be a PR disaster - remember
the
recent fiasco when LucasArts wanted to shut down all web sites featuring
copyrighted Star Wars images and logos ? They quickly realised that such
a move
would alienate many people and abandoned the exercise.

Tony

Brigade Models :
http:/www.tonyfrancis.free-online.co.uk/brigadeframes.htm