BMW files suit against Turbosquid
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http://www.protectingdesigns.com/bmw-group-files-suit-against-turbosquid
Protecting Design reports, “BMW Group is seeking a permanent injunction for infringement, destruction of products, advertisements, and packaging in TurboSquid’s possession or control bearing BMW Group’s trademarks or trade dress, and recovery of TurboSquid’s profits from the alleged infringement, treble actual damages, and reasonable expenses.”The claim is exhaustive, but it’s goes deeper than Turbosquid and users in their community making money off of 3D models of BMWs. It starts all the way down at the marketing of the 3D assets. The suit claims that Turbosquid Inc. itself is responsible for violating “the Trademark Act of 1946… and New Jersey law through its marketing of 3-D virtual models of vehicles that infringe the BMW Group’s trademark, trade dress, and design patent rights.”
The suit not only calls for Turbosquid to destroy “all labels, signs, prints, packages, bottles, receptacles, containers, and advertisements… bearing the BMW Group’s trademarks,” but also call for an accounting for complete restitution of all profits and payments for any profits resulting in the sale of any 3D assets
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Maybe BMW are tired of seeing their top of the line cars parked in shitty renders
Think BMW are tough, let me tell you Disney are the absolute worst.
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Stupid attitude... It's surely caused by the low profit they make by selling the real models. If this comes through, what will happen to sites like these that run their business on 3d models of real products?
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must be some eager lawyer at HQ. Stupid decision. Will mean no more free exposure for their brand and more exposure for their competitors. Lets hope this won't be a new trend.
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Ive been waiting for this to happen for a long time.
if you make a model of a car - ford, BMW, any - as a model kit or a "hot wheels" you have to buy a licence to do so from the firms involved. same as if you do a kit of say the USS Enterprise.
all well and good, and frankly I've no problem with that.
but in the 3D world... I've seen hundreds of cars, movie props, designer clothes, etc.. all knocked out and sold by modelers wwho don't pay for the licence for them.
no gentlemen, it's not right for them to do so and it is right for the company's involved to protect themselves.
we expect the same protections on our work, Copyrights, tradedress, etc.
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@khai said:
we expect the same protections on our work, Copyrights, tradedress, etc.
No we don't.
Some of us do, like you I bet, but not all.
There's an huge difference in copying your work in itself and creating representations of it. The difference is such a big one, in fact, that this is the reason stupidity is the word I'd use in this case, to describe BMW s actions.
If I design a house I want to keep the copyright of it's design for sure, but I also want people to know about it. I don't want people to build it upon its plans freely but I won't suit photographers for shooting it, painters for painting it. Sketches for sketching it or modelers from modelling it.
Will BMW suit every auto magazine in the world for showing pictures of their cars and make money from them?
Would you?
Copying design implies copying it's purpose too. Representing design only implies using it's image. Nobody is claiming they designed the BMW. They are only honestly having their 3d skills and effort on sale.
BMW are being greedy and old fashioned and they hit a major blow in their own image.
What are they really afraid of?
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so your saying, it's ok to ignore copyrights and tradedress to gain free advertising?
no. we'll never agree on that and nor will the law.
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I completely agree with JQL. How is taking a picture of a house, or making a 3D representation of something copyright infringement? Copy means take something and make the identical thing. Take a brick, or take a sheet of metal and make a new house or a new car. And these 3D models can in no way be used to replicate the original. They can't be used for making a mold, operating a CNC machine or anything similar. They can only show how something looks like, not how it's manufactured, what technology or engineering is used. It's even free advertising for BMW, I don't see in which way are they suffering damage from this. I'm sure Turbosquid will win this on court.
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Edit: damned phone...
No I'm not saying that. I think it's a terrifying thing to infringe copyright laws. I'm just saying this shouldn't be considered an infringement to copyright laws. If BMW's lawyers found a way to regard turbosquid's acts as a copyright infringement, then copyright laws should be changed so to protect what turbosquid is doing, design connected is doing and even sketchucation is doing.
It looks to me as if they're trying to take away some legit profit here, and they're even hurting themselves in the process... its simply stupid, or even more than that...
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So, every picture ever taken and every painting, every youtube clip (or vimeo or whatever), every everything that contains any of BMW's material, intended or not, that does not have express written consent and / or a licence will have to be destroyed?
I love my BMW, but this kind of thing is a little OTT if you ask me.
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Weird approach to promotion.
How does this work in movies where cars a CG?
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I read in some other forum about a guy who had worked for a company that had BMW as a client and even though they got 3D CAD models from them there was always a lot of work to fix them so they usually used models from Turbosquid instead.
"I wonder if they'll be willing to pay for the extra time it takes to fix the models," he said.
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