"Trademarking History?"

[n4gix 4,947]

I was unaware that Northrop/Grumman had recently shaken down a flightsim publisher for alleged "trademark infringement" until today, when I read a very long and disturbing thread here:http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?...15&pagenumber=1A quote from that thread:"I spoke to Mr. Patrick Joyce (REMOVED PHONE NUMBER) at Northrop this morning. He is the person who handles such things for their company; it might even be his only responsibility. Anyway, he was the person who requested TM fees from the Russian developer and eventually received said fees from the French publisher. He is not an attorney but here is what I could gather from our little chat.Northrop/Grumman is requiring trademark licensing fees for the use of any aircraft, ship, boat, vehicle or weapon system that they our any of their acquired companies have ever produced. They maintain that all these things are covered by either registered trademark or

[Guest joea]

I certainly do, and this reminds me of other incidents in the past.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Let's not jump to any conclusions. Bill, I will look into this and report back tomorrow or Tuesday.

[n4gix 4,947]

>Let's not jump to any conclusions. Bill, I will look into>this and report back tomorrow or Tuesday.Thanks, Tom. That's part of the reason I posted the quote containing the contact's name and phone number.Also, the OP's contact info may be found here:Red Gypsy Animation - http://www.redgypsy.com/This company has a very impressive client list, so I'm fairly confident he's not some 'fly by night' game developer wanna-be... :)The "French Publisher" is, of course a very well-known company...

[n4gix 4,947]

To add another point to this issue, here is an OP-ED article regarding this same "licensing issue" that is adversely affecting the resin-kit modeling cottage industry, wherein aircraft manufacturers are demanding licensing fees:http://modelingmadness.com/tomseditorial.htm

[Guest joea]

>Let's not jump to any conclusions. Bill, I will look into>this and report back tomorrow or Tuesday.Tom were you able to find out anything?

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

I have not yet received a reply to my email, and probably won't.

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

Bill,No mate not disturbing at all. TRI had to put upwith this with their Fly! series of sims.Initially in Fly! all the default aircraft carried the trademarks and names of the various manufacturers. eg. Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Some where along the line prior to the release of Fly! II suits got involved and Cessna were reminded that they had a contract with another sim producer :-) . Piper were approached but they too could only see $$$ in their eyes and wanted anexhorbitant amount of money for use of their trademarks.The net result is that most aircraft in Fly! II carry fictitious name Fly!hawk ( Cessna 172 Skyhawk) Kodiak ( piper Navajo) etc. A rose by any other name !Just a major hurdle why you are very unlikely to see serious competiton amongst flight sims in the future. I believe Jepperson are also locked into an exclusive contract.Cheers,Roger

[btacon 1,772]

Seems silly...yet again, they do have right to trademark.A result of this litigious world.My humble opinion,bt

[Guest lionheart777]

This is a bit silly. The amount of money I dont think is very much and I see this as free advertising. That a firm goes out of their way to create the 'Cessna' or other project freely and they now want a piece of the action can be countered with 'Ok, make one for our sim and we'll think about putting it in there' type of mentality.This is free advertisement and in most cases will sell a Cessna or Piper, etc, which is in the hundreds of thousands. If the game sold 'one', the game paid off and the return would have yielded more on a profit via the sales of a plane as compared with the mieger earnings of gaming profits, which are split through the teams and the costs of the software sales and web management, not to mention any advertising expenditures......I say, they can make their own planes if they want to 'squeeze' those that promote them...

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

You do realize of course that you responded to a thread that is almost two years old and mostly irrelevant now, don't you? :)

[Guest lionheart777]

LOLOLOL...FiguresI was searching for another file and came upon this one thinking it was recent and new. I do remember the Grumman 'case'. Wasnt sure if this might have been some new ground uncovered...

[Guest BryUK]

Well, not entirely irrelevant.If you look at games which have been released since featuring real military aircraft, they are all officially licensed to use the names and designs. Namco's Ace Combat series is one example and is officially licensed by BAE Systems, Boeing, Dassault Aviation, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. And that is an arcade shooter, not a simulator, so its nothing to do with getting realistic handling performance or detailed systems modelling. They pay for the licenses because they are basically required to do so. Lessons learnt from the UbiSoft adventure.That said, not all manufactors require a license. All the Russian designs so far for example.The blessing for most flightsim developers is they are too small to be a concern. And at least Boeing seem to be very liberal on the matter.Here's the disclaimer from the Ace Combat websiteACE COMBAT