The NC Transportation Museum's gift shop has 611 merchandise available, including Class J No. 611 Inaugural T-shirts that can be purchased online.

superheater wrote:
How does somebody trademark something that is not (their) original work and has been in the public domain since 1950?

iamdarb wrote:

"Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of "original works of authorship"

Trademark is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. The terms "trademark" and "mark" are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks."


http://www.lawmart.com/forms/difference.htm


So, you don't know the answer? Apart from my extraneous comment about originality, how does this apply?

You left out the R4D (USN);)

I was simply making a clarification for you since "original" was a pretty important word choice in your question. "Original" implies copywrite which they are not seeking. They want to protect the brand 611 brings to their organization, thus "trademark".

Anyway, VMT only applied for a trademark. It's very possible the US Patent & Trademark Office says no.

Has anyone ever seen an existing object, symbol or image that has been in the public domain for a long period of time being trademarked? It would not happen, because it goes against what a trademark is designed to do. A trademark is a unique image, artwork, symbol etc. that creates in the minds of consumers a connection between the mark and the owner. No sane trademark owner would take something that already has an established meaning and try to change that thing to represent themselves. It destroys the very thing that the mark is trying to do. This is why you never see old trademarks and logos recycled to represent new companies.

Now, if I were a railfan products maker and decided to sell a line of N&W J class locomotive apparel, VMT would have a very hard time trying to defend their trademark against me, because they would have to prove that I was using their mark and not simply using the image of a J class locomotive. How can they make the case that my apparel was using their mark and not the pre mark image of a J locomotive, when both are identical?

A short search reveals that the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Transamerica Building, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Biltmore Estate, the Golden Gate Bridge, and many other notable vintage landmarks are trademarked.

1998 article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB897434998149805000

see also http://www.law360.com/articles/249236/h ... rpet-lines

Mind you, I'm NOT defending the VMT. Your second paragraph is perfectly sensible. However, you're not going to sell many Bachmann Spectrum models of N&W 600 at the VMT Gift Shop or the hobby shop down the road compared to models of 611..........

Oh yeah? Go to this link, search on UNION PACIFIC, and see what comes up.

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4807:20ljdj.1.1

The USPTO will grant practically any application... it's up to those who have an objection to file said objection. Life is too short to be forever tilting at windmills.

Of particular interest is serial number 77569635, UNION PACIFIC. They claim first use in 1897, first use on toy trains in 1951. They actually filed the trademark application in 2008, and the mark was registered in 2009.

Rick, your interpretation of trademark law is the same as mine, but due to numerous court cases, the interpretation of the law is changing. We have pro sports to thank for that.

Trademark law is in desperate need of an overhaul, But I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. The mega corps have all the money, and always want more.

Gentile v. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is an interesting case to study
http://www.jurisnotes.com/IP/articles/t ... kblues.htm
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/tra ... d_roll.htm

Hi,

There was an interesting incident that is sort of relevant here in the microprocessor market in the 1980s.

In the 1970s, integrated circuits had letter and numbers such as 7400, 74LS00 and so forth. They were frequently extended so that an MC7400 would ne from Motorola or a TI7400 from Texas Insturments.

In about 1980, the iapx88 and iapx86 were released buy Intel. These were later renamed the 8088 and 8086 - the heart of the IBM PC. This lead to the personnal computer explosion. These two micros plus the marketing push by IBM.

They evolved into the 80286, 80386,and the 80486.

Intel wanted to trademark (or something similar) the 80586 - the next version. The trademark and Patent office said you could not trademark a number.

The 80586 became the Pentium which was trademarked. There are many who offer differently developed but similarly pinned out such as the Celeron. Each tries to say theirs is better than anothers but externally, they are roughly the same. since they can be swapped in a PC motherboard and still work.

I think that the trademark for the 611 will not hold water unless there is more to it to define it from others using 611 (say cc's in a automobile engine).

It will be interesting to see how it will end up.

Doug vV

No. It's not. Trademarking does not do that.

At all.

What you're talking about is trolling: if any jackass sends 100 legalistic-sounding letters demanding a modest amount of money, he'll get payment on 30 or 40 of them immediately, and more if he presses. Because it's cheaper to pay than litigate, even if you're in the right. Trolling is a disease in the legal system, and judges will act like white corpuscles and kill it. Dead.

Trolling isn't necessarily "hear my evil laugh" intentional knowing fraud. It can often be self-centered parties drunk-stumbling around the law, seeing only their side of things and not common sense. Part of a lawyer's job is telling his client when he needs to stop. This is why Molski's lawyer got punished too.

So, back to "trademarking does not work that way".

Any jackass can arrange to send a nasty letter or claim trademarks. That doesn't mean a thing. It only matters if there's a real case there.

Trademarks are about consumer confusion. The key question is whether consumers will think yours is a product of VMT or endorsed by VMT. You are always allowed to reference something by its common name: did I mention the case where a hotel tried to have an escort's web page removed for merely saying she'd be at the hotel at certain dates? That means you can definitely call your video "The 2015 tour of N&W J-class 611", because well, that's the common name for the subject matter. What else are you supposed to call it?

You're in trouble when you create consumer confusion by allowing your product to look like their product: "VMT presents 611 world tour video". (sounds like VMT presents this video. Whoops.) That's where you want to steer clear of their new creations such as the slogans, logos, drawings/style, that particular red and gold (or is it blue and white?) If your design is a derivation of their design, don't do that.

A clever artist could throw this in VMT's face. Celebrate this event by creating his OWN style, slogans, and colors - designed to be clearly different from VMT's, and better - and then cast it into the public domain so any railroadiana producer can use it. I certainly think more could be done with the J-class 611's art deco lines than VMT has done with it.

There's no question in my mind that VMT's trademark claims are outrageous and overreaching. It's a great example of "anyone can say anything". Certainly, this has had a "chilling effect" in the marketplace, and that maybe, that's their endgame and they mean to go no further, except for makers who blatantly rip off IP that is unquestionably theirs. But the rest says "We aim to troll"... and I would not want to go to court with that albatross around my neck.

Remember -- Righthaven, Prenda and Molski were correct "in fact". Those blogs did copy newspaper articles. Those kids did pirate porn. Those restaurants were a few inches shy of ADA compliance. The problem is, they were not correct "in law", which by definition means just. Trolling is never just, and that's why they got nuked.

-----------------------
I am not a lawyer, but my cat says he is.

All *I* was referencing was the first two sentences:
"I think it sets a bad precedent and causes more harm than good. Their intended target for this are people who sell N&W J class merchandise, which in the grand scheme of things will never be a substantial source of revenue for VMT."
In no way did I want to imply that VMT would have the right to force users to take down independently shot videos of 611. In rather broad theory, if they got the right trademarks, they could make a royal pain of themselves TRYING to do so, and end up with the same negative PR the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum did--bad enough that they lost a few benefactors, as I recall--and that Major League Baseball and the NFL get every time they throw about their muscle cracking down on video redistribution.

What's next for NS on the 4-8-4 No. 611 licensing the locomotive in order to get the royalties in the Model Railway manufacturing of the models and it's copies? just an opinion.

Mr. Starr

The other thing about patent/copyright/trademark trolling: When an organization applies for nonprofit status, via Form 1023, it must answer a thousand questions about its activities, all of which are "red flag" questions. (when VMT applied, a much simpler form was in use. That does not grandfather them.) The IRS asks some very pointed questions about Intellectual Property, which suggests to me they've witnessed abuse in this area, "abuse" usually means collecting income and failing to pay Unrelated Business Income Tax.

Here's the thing. Nonprofits also file an annual Form 990, and one question is "are you engaged in any new activities not previously mentioned on your 1023 or previous 990's?" You must disclose every one, but especially if IRS asks that question on the modern 1023.

990s are public documents (as are 1023s) and any citizen can request VMT's.

But this entire IP tempest is about one single solitary thing so far: a wildly overreaching web page. Which could have been potentially written by one guy unbeknownst of VMT's board. Have we witnessed any OTHER trademark trolling activities?