Legal issues over depicting World War Two equipment

[mondo]

Originally Posted by Former_Older

But that is their Right to not care about the helmet and boot and shovel. Why is it not NGC's Right to care about their own designs? They need to change what they do to protect their business, to cater to flight sim users? Is that reasonable?

Think about that a moment.

NGC is a real company that employs real people and has an actual responsibility to it's shareholders and employees. If they please to protect themselves by acting within their guaranteed by law rights, then what right do you have to say they should not do so?

If it was a depiction of one of there products thats actually being produced, marketed and sold today and has direct competition then I'd agree with you 100% but in this case none of it is. Its all over 60 years old and none of its in service any more. They are not protecting anything, they are just being difficult and essentially asking people to buy the right to depict history.

I hear what your saying and if it was a current product then I could see why they would want people to seek permission and probably pay up some cash or lip service to them for the use of the image but it serves no purpose to them to block people using the image rights to a 60 year old iconic part of history.

Its trademarking and copyrighting gone mad (or gone USA I guess). Imagine if all the other companies or people who own the image rights in IL2 for the 50+ different plane types all did the same thing. No more flight sims.