f13.net

It's still just a rumour (http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=114;t=002241) but scarily plausible. Apparently some WWII airplane manufacturers would have warned Oleg Maddox (of Il2 Sturmovik fame) not to include models of their planes in future expansions for his simulators.

You missed the 'im' in implausible.

Northrop Grumman may want to protect their heritage so that they can enter into agreements with other companies in order to profit from it. I don't see why this is any more lunatic than any other IP protection. Granted, the merest mention of IP makes me want to torch a bunch of patent waving leeches with a flamethrower. However, in this particular instance, its less extreme than about another dozen recent IP cases that I can think of.

This strikes me as a standard IP thing. It is their work, their machines. Were someone to try to use their technology and sell a plane, they would be in trouble.

Intellectual property is generally the first phrase used by people who quite obviously have no capacity to actual possess the thing they claim to own.

Except this isn't someone trying to sell a reproduction F6F as authentic, this is someone selling a computer model of a likeness and not trying to pass it off as anything other than a computer model.  The images of these planes are so widely available that I seriously doubt you could go anywhere with any kind of lawsuit based on an aspect of using a 'likeness'.  Hell, how many other computer games had likenesses that they said nothing about?

Daimler-Benz and Porsche just called.  All German tanks in WWII games will now be represented by Unicycles.  Until Schwinn finds out...

Schwinn makes unicycles? Never in my days as a rodeo clown did I see a Schwinn unicycles.

http://brandscycle.com/site/itemdetails.cfm?ID=1309&Catalog=39&sort=Price

You were probably a pretty craptastic rodeo clown then.

This is a lot like the situation where the Counterstrike developers were asked by the gun makers to not use weapons named after their guns.

Though the odd thing about the Counter-Strike situation was that the free download continued to use the trademarked names and designs -- it was only the retail package that had everything renamed. I don't know how Valve got away with that.

Hmm weren't these machines government contracted?  Seems to me they have an angle there.  "Sure it's protected - now pay every US taxpayer residuals back for all living relatives going 75 years back to 1929."

And the Axis planes, I'd love to be the lawyer raking Mitsubishi and Volkswagon over the coals.  Long overdue.  Bring it on.  "So you wish to be the sole financial owners for all ramifications of your Messerschmidt?"  I wonder what the present value is for London assets destroyed by 1943.

And then there is the issue of the underlying patents.  Maybe they'll just charge theft of their "Look And Feel" for camoflauge and military insignia placement.  Or even better, a business patent on monoprops and in-wing cannon.

Hopefully Oleg is quiet because they just realized they won the lottery and they're building their case.

The first part doesn't matter. It's the likeness thats the whole issue here, not that its a computer model vs. the real thing.

I would imagine that the companies have a two prong licensing system, one for profit uses and one for non-profit. In fact for a non-profit hobbyist, no license is probably required and thats why the free mods are able to use the names in CounterStrike.

I really don't see how Oleg has won the lottery here, unless the companies involved haven't been enforcing their IP. Otherwise, its really an open and shut case for the companies.

This really shouldn't surprise anyone here, its SOP for a company.

Sure but I think the implicit issue they lost control over the IP years ago.

P41, meet aspirin.  I'd think they would have a point with representations of current airplanes.  But as the defense lawyer I'd be happy to have them explain why after almost twenty years of historical plane sims they only now stepped to the plate.

That's exactly the issue.  Unless the company has had deals with or been sending a C&D to History Channel, Time-Life, CBS, NBC... hell EVERY media outlet on the planet for the last 60 years, they lost IP rights to that WW2-era stuff a LONG time ago.

Since IP dickery like this is fairly recent, and our grandparents would have kicked the asses of anyone holding out their hand anytime a newsreel showed a plane, the case is pretty strongly on Oleg's side. He just caved rather than going the expensive route that would have bankrupted him and done nothing to the Mfr.

Humm, I'd think the Federal Goverment would control that.  Tax dollars paid for the development, typically.   It would be different for purely private sector aircraft.

Not to mention the whole thing about their planes being represented in movies, TV shows, books, comic books, et. al. since ohhhhh, FOREVER.

Dumbasses.

Actually iirc this is a long standing urban myth in the Sim world. I recall something coming up about this a cpl of years ago on a ww2ol board. And why would they only target IL2?

Though I for one would by quite happy to have the maker of the british crusader tanks take their crap back..thankyouverymuchyoupieceoftincanrubbishthatdiestoafricken20mmcannonshot....


edit: Wow that thread reaches 7 pages without still no one introducing anything like real evidence. Heh.