aircraft design legal question

[Guest jallen]

When a payware company makes an aircraft. Did they get authorization from the manufacturer to do it? If they didn't, wouldn't that mean that the flight dynamics could be unrealistic and misrepresent the actual aircraft? Looking at payware sites, I do not see any legal jargin stating that the aircraft was creating with any express written consent? Is it just a loophole in the system. Or, is not a copyright infringment since you are making a "virual" representation. But how can you use another companies name?

[Guest Dan CYKA]

Geez man...you sure like to bring up trouble.Now prepare yourself for the massive trampling as all the lawyers on the AVSIM forums race in here to give you their opions as to how the legal system works. :-sword My gosh will people never learn.:-lol

[Guest Ian_K]

Hello J,Aircraft data, specifications, drawings and photographs are published every where. These are copyright products belonging to the publisher. The information extracted from there can never be.Go ahead with a freeware or payware design as there is nothing to stop you from producing a creative product as long as you don't reproduce complete images of pages or diagrams in large quantities.Much of the work is in obtaining enough data to do the designs. But also to reverse engineer how this data is represented in the design files used in MSFS.Yes the Flight Dynamics are often wrong. Having a pilot in the team makes for even more "it's not right" criticisms. The recent T-37B was made for a serving USAF officer who was trained in the thing and is to be used for USAF training/pilot selection. There is a commercial public version which is a bit different. It was required to be as realistic as the previous dedicated simulator and it seems to have achieved this.Ian

[Guest Karl R Pettersen]

>Go ahead with a freeware or payware design as there is nothing>to stop you from producing a creative product as long as you>don't reproduce complete images of pages or diagrams in large>quantities.Define "creative product" and "large quantities" :D If the aircraft production companies where as "legally concerned" as some of the free and payware fs addons makers, we would all be in some really serious trouble. I've always claimed the fs "industry" to take these "legal matters" far too serious.

[Guest Ian_K]

Well all the definitions are in the dictionary. Any good lawyer will attempt to confuse the situation to start an arguement and end up providing a lot of expensive advice. It comes down to whether you are a man of straw i.e., are you worth sueing. If not they will have to pay all the legal bills. If you are a business with a large turn over then it would be a money making proposition for them, or they could take you over and take your income if that is going to be more.Motto: be carefull of success :-)Ian

[Shaka 2]

>When a payware company makes an aircraft. Did they get>authorization from the manufacturer to do it? If they didn't,>wouldn't that mean that the flight dynamics could be>unrealistic and misrepresent the actual aircraft? Looking atThe flight dynamics have nothing to do with whether the designer had authorization or not. Just having the authorization does not necessarily mean the manufacturer is going to give away all their data. I know of at least one exception though: Flight One has partnered with ATR Aircraft to produce an ATR 72-500. I'm not sure whether that partnership includes access to engineering and flight data. >payware sites, I do not see any legal jargin stating that the>aircraft was creating with any express written consent? Is it>just a loophole in the system. Or, is not a copyright>infringment since you are making a "virual" representation. >But how can you use another companies name?Well, if look at how many different flight simulators are out there, then you think that this would have come out a long time ago. I would like to point out one interesting aspect in regards to airline liveries. When you look at how many liveries are for sale for certain payware aircraft, you have to wonder if the airline companies are concerned with this at all. I'm sure that the payware companies don't contact all the airlines. Maybe they just consider it as "co-branding" and look on it as harmless. But what if they did contact the manufacturere/airline? What if some payware company got the idea to set up an "exclusive" deal, where they became the only licensed FS add-on distributer for Airbus or British Airways, or whatever? Well, I'm sure that this wouldn't happen, but imagine if these companies started protecting thier copyrighted names and logos...American Airlines used to specifically prohibit thier name on any freeware/payware aircraft, and this only changed a couple years ago. I believe the reason for lifting the ban had to do with the bad publicity that was generated every time someone tried to uplaod an AA livery. As far as I know, there is still some sort of waiver that needs to be included with any AA aircraft.- Martin

[dmaher 0]

In practice large game developers won't use a proper likeness of a commercial product without an agreement. I'm sure it's no surprise you can't just drop a Porsche in your driving game. I don't see why it would be any different for a small developer. The question is