What is the issue with Grumman?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Verdun1916

But to put it simple, this is not a game, it's business. And any product made by Northrop-Grumman or any other businesses affiliated with this company dating all the way back to their foundations are trademarked by N-G.

IANAL, but many of the grounds on which N-G claims trademark seem very dubious. It seems like N-G is doing to model companies and computer game makers what patent trolls are doing to software developers and scientists. They're making broad and dubious IP claims, threatening to sue, and revoking their threats after the defendant pays a "licensing fee." Basically, it's legal extortion.

Practically, there's nothing we can do as fans (we lack standing, except maybe as members of a consumer class action suit). Practically, Ubisoft's lawyers screwed up massively by agreeing to the N-G consent decree as it is written.

Even so it sucks, and I have a feeling that a smart IP lawyer could make a very good case against N-G's claims.

Frex:

N-G claims trademark for "USS Arizona" because that ship was built in a shipyard that N-G briefly owned (via Ingalls Shipyards) over 70 years after the fact.

But:

While the USS Arizona existed, neither N-G or any prior company subsequently owned by N-G, attempted to copyright the term "USS Arizona" or its appearance while the ship existed.

For many years after the USS Arizona was sunk, the shipyards which might have claimed copyright failed to assert their rights, thus allowing any potential copyright passed into public domain.

The original specifications of the ship, the shipyard in which it was built, and all modifications to the ship were done under the auspices of the US Navy, and as work created by and for the US government should be copyright free.

N-G divested itself of Ingalls Shipyard and all shipbuilding business (one of which build the USS Arizona) sometime in the 1990s, before IL2 was a gleam in Oleg Maddox's eye. Thus, even if it ever owned the USS Arizona trademark, it no longer had rights to that trademark at the time of the consent decree because it sold the company which held it!

As a historical product which N-G and its subsidiaries are unlikely to ever produce commercially, there is no commercial harm whatsoever to their basic business (i.e., making weapons and aircraft) if someone makes a model of the USS Arizona. If someone were to start making functional replicas, then maybe N-G would have a real complaint. If N-G were a graphic design firm whose revenue stream depended on unique licensing origianl CGI models and other images of the USS Arizona, then they might have a complaint. As it stands, though it's hard, even for a layman, to understand how someone making CGI models of a ship which was obsolete even in 1941 is messing with N-G's current business.

If N-G wants to treat the USS Arizona as a "creative work" like an old Disney movie, they're still out of luck because anything along those lines produced before 1923 (and sometimes later) is out of copyright. That means that the ship's name can't be copyrighted because it was launched and named in 1915! Additionally, the ship's appearance up to 1923 is now out of copyright just like any other work. Trying to claim otherwise is a bit like claiming that the USS Constitution (laid down in 1794) can be trademarked because it was refitted at the distant ancestor of a shipyard that N-G once owned!

Even if N-G were to assert copyright protections, as a US National Monument and famous historical ship, the terms "USS Arizona" and images of the ship can't be used as copyrights for the ship itself. Sure, you could sell "USS Arizona widgets" and use images of the ship in your advertising and successfully claim copyright, but claiming the ship itself and any images of it as copyrights is a bit like copyrighting "Yosemite National Park" and a map of the park and then trying to collect royalties from anyone who draws their own maps, or who attempts to use any image of the park, or reference to it!