Posted 07 May 2013 - 06:59 PM
Greg,
All these logos, including the Porsche example, have been changed several times since the 1960s. They MAY look the same but are not. The car and oil companies are only interested in protecting their current trademarks. I went through that all my life in the toy industry. The mistake that the train decals makers made was to attract the attention of the trademark holders by asking their permission, and that started the whole mess.
As an example, I represented for about ten years, a company manufacturing Ferrari models, with their trademark clearly exposed on the packaging and the cars. As I wanted to have that company make a special model for me, I wrote the trademark holder for models, Mattel, a letter requesting permission to make 500 models of that car.
The reply was swift and threatening: "any such attempt will cause legal action, we are not interested in royalties, we will make those models ourselves etc.".
So I told the guy in Italy to make the models, I imported and distributed them without Mattel and Ferrari consent and sold them all. That was in 2000/2005..
When you have such small quantities, they will never find out until someone literally put one under their ambulance-chaser attorneys noses.
Also if it is produced outside the USA and you set a "ghost" corporation, good luck to them and they know it.
As far as I am concerned, any advertising for them should be welcomed, but many of these companies are simply greedy and are after each penny to pay their shyster lawyers retainers.
So as far as I am concerned, EFF them all.
Over the years, only Porsche has been very cooperative in this regard, very nice people who encourage reproductions of their models.
