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Originally Posted by agesthreeandup
IC IC, I just wonder how so many others out there get away with such things. Happywell told me about how they changed the 1/55 Macross mold for their Galaxy Defender line. There is not a lot of changes to it, just some minor mold changes to several pieces, otherwise it is just the same as Jetfire. You can even use the Die cast parts with the Galaxy Defender one to repair a bad Jetfire, that is how close they are. They also told me that you can get around patients by changing the size of the figure. If it is a different size then there is no infringement.
A lot of this could just be stuff from China. I have no idea how patients work in Canada. If it is just for items made in Canada or for product imported into Canada. I am no lawyer so I have no interprertation of the law here.
Spencer.
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Yeah, patents are a tricky business, usually, patents may have to be submitted country by country, since I don't think there's an international patent submission.
If you look at Prozac, it's patent has expired and anyone is free to use the exact production method and make their own. There's not much (if any) of a different between Prozac and a generic brand (other than the marketing maybe).
You could compare that to the Honeywell example. But I'm sure Honeywell had to reverse engineer their own mold; Bandai's not simply going to let people use their molds, they'll guard them or destroy them like confidential files. Those roadbots do not mention the word "transformer", so they're sort of getting away with it, since they're labelling it as a totally different and unique product, and the designs are unique.
Large corporations are a big oddity, they may not care, or they may pull out their lawyers, either immediately, or after they bid there time, very strange.
As a consumer, I'd be most worried about the SAFETY of knock off toys. They don't have to pass product inspections (they basically smuggled or sneaked into the market).
I wouldn't want to collect/play around with a toy that uses cheap, leaded paint or what other unsafe paint/chemicals used to product that knock off, let alone a child. That's why I"ll never let my children play with knockoffs when I'm a parent.
