Quote:
Originally Posted by Jcotter
ok, trades are one thing; I completely agree and understand using a companies name without their permission is wrong. What about the shape? If I decide to make sell plain t shirts, should I have to pay a license fee?
lets make the example more relevant,lets say I make plain t shirts for dolls, should I have to pay fruit of the loom license fee's for using something that replicates the form of a t shirt? How would fruit of the loom loose money by me selling doll shirts?
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As M102404 said, its not really possible to trademark something this obviously available to everyone (like a sock, etc). T-shirts have been made by thousands of companies for decades. Fruit of the Loom has zero expectation that anyone seeing a t-shirt will automatically identify it as a Fruit of the Loom product.
This is not the case with the SCAR. If you see an airsoft gun of that design, you would say "That's a SCAR." You wouldn't call it anything else no matter what the distributor was calling it (ASC, MK16, MK17, etc). The SCAR design is proprietary to FN and they have the expectation that only FN and its licensees will produce guns with that look. If FN had sub-licensed manufacture of the real steel SCAR to someone else, then this argument wouldn't be valid (see Enterprise Arms and the FAL).
Glock went after importers of the KWA/KSC Glock-style airsoft pistols a few years ago. Most of these guns coming into the US didn't say Glock anywhere on them, but they replicated a Glock exactly. Since the design of the Glock is unique to Glock, they had every right to send out Cease and Desist letters in order to protect their trademarks and trade dress. I don't recall a huge "Boycott Glock" campaign when this happened?
Cybergun does what it can to protect its license agreements in North America by stopping importation of knock-off product. This step is required by most license grantors. They don't go after retailers and it is nearly impossible to go after factories in Asia.
After reading through all of the posts, I still find it comical that people say that Cybergun makes ONLY crap. I guess if you consider G&G, VFC, King Arms, Classic Army, JG, and Inokatsu crap, then you're spot on.