Promodellers has changed to Florymodels

[AlanG]

Just thought i'd let you all know that thanks to Revell USA threatening to take legal action against Phil Flory of Promodellers, Phil has changed the Promodeller to Florymodels to save a legal battle.

Announcment can be seen here

- news

[John]

I read he wasn't getting any joy trying to contact Revell but that's about as much as I heard, why are they trying to sue?

[AlanG]

I believe it's something to do with Revell USA owning the old Promodeller name when they bought out the company.

[stona]

Thanks for the heads up. I've logged the name change,hopefully it won't be a problem for Mr Flory. As he says on his site "pass it on" if everyone does that it shouldn't be an issue for him.

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

I was surprised when he was being very cavalier about this on the news video. If a company of this size's lawyers get there teeth into something, they do not let go. It really will have had nothing to do with Revell US or Germany as Phil thought. He was upset because they would not answer his emails regarding discussing this matter but in reality, Revell US nor Revell Germany would have anything to do with it. Corporations of this size employ lawyers to do nothing else but protect their trademarks and intellectual property. Disney is a classic. I have been involved with a small retailer who was 'contacted' by Disney's solicitors and they do not pull any punches.

In essence, the small retailer I worked for had a Public Domain software library for the Amiga computer and Disney released a software package called Disney Animation Studio. To promote this they put into the public domain an example disk of what the package was capable off. The way that the public domain libraries operate is that some libraries get hold of the original disk and other get it from them. They in turn supply other libraries as well as their customers. In this 'spreading' of the product, the name of the disk got changed slightly. By the time we got hold of it, it was known to us and others as Disney Animations disk.

To cut a long story short, we received a recorded delivery letter from Disney solicitors telling us that we had to cease within 48 hours of receipt all distribution of the disk and removal of all current and possible future advertising. In essence, we had to, within 48 hours, get every computer magazine that had been sold, still in newsagents and stop the publishers from releasing any further copies of their magazines that contained our advert. In fact, this was obviously impossible and they new it.

We took legal advice and our solicitor said that we had to comply with everything they requested other than the impossible, which he was going to point out to them. We had to send every copy of the disk we had to them with grovelling letters explaining that we would never do such an evil act as promoting there product again.

Remember that this was actually Disney's own disk that they put into the public domain to be freely distributed. The content of their original letter included the wording that if we did not comply with their demands, we would not have a business within 7 days. We were threatened most blatantly and our legal advise was 'You cannot afford to take them on, they can say and do what they want'.

Promodeller has used a similar style of brand name for years, there is no reason that this has suddenly happened, it is just that the evil eye of the corporate legal team has fallen on them, could be that they have promoted the new B17 model, could be pure coincidence. Whatever, Phil would not stand a chance in court nor would Revell be interested in talking to him, it is purely a legal operation.

Think on, at one stage in the late eighties, early nineties Disney had 60% income from litigation. They have sued parents of children who have painted Disney characters on their bikes, they have sued nursery schools and hospitals for using Disney characters in wards and class rooms. I hate organisations that have so much money they are a law unto themselves, they don't need nor want to negotiate a reasonable settlement with anyone, they know that the person they have their talons into cannot afford to defend themselves in court so they go for maximum damage to the company they feel are using anything of theirs. I don't have a problem with people protecting their copyright and although Promodeller was not the same, let's be honest, it was near enough. The Disney disk we distributed was theirs, it was in the public domain but they didn't care, they would have closed us down.

[stona]

My partners web site included,inadvertantly, a Getty copyrighted image. It was put there by a web designer who should have known better but it was SWMBO who was legally responsible. The Getty lawyers sent very threatening letters demanding very large sums of money although the image was immiediately removed. It took several months of negotiation before an agreement was reached to pay a more modest but still substantial sum.

The problem is that the big dog,Getty,sets the sum to be paid for using the image. They also levy a penalty for the breach of copyright which I thought was something a court should do. I can't fine anybody for parking across my driveway! Getty may well be entitled to something for the use of their image but a penalty? They know that most of their victims can't possibly afford to challenge them in court,that makes it a form of bullying.

Steve

[John]

When I first started the forum I got an email from the editor of a well known modeling mag asking me to remove something someone had posted it was a scanned page out of their mag I removed it straight away and heard nothing else from them I guess I was lucky it didn't go further but even now I try and check all posts just in case someone does the same.