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Reply to "Licensing of railroads in "toyland""

@rplst8 posted:
During the Atlas beer reefer boom, and this would apply to any product in similar circumstances, an HO modeler had made a quantity of reefers with a large city's "long defunct" brewery beer brand/logo on it. He got raided by the Feds because a megabrewery had bought and owned all the rights to that brewery and brand.

That is totally nuts!  Was he selling the models he made on the open market?

@colorado hirailer posted:

A smalltown brewery, with once wide sales, but now defunct, which never owned logoed reefers, in that same state, had imaginary G scale reefers produced by someone who claimed to own the rights.  An attempt begun to make HO reefers with that logo, by someone else, unaware, as in the first instance, that the rights were owned, was curtailed.

The issue here is a tad stickier since a prototype never existed, but wow - what an overreach.

Why do storys like that never have details? Two unusually similar storys that happened in the same unknown state but no city or town named, no defunct brewery name ( 2 of them ) , no mega brewery name, no date, an unidentified HO modeler in both instances who both coincidentally tried to make reefers ,an unidentified someone that supposedly "owned" the rights, nothing to help verify or vet or allow any of us to look it up. Feds just don't raid a business out of the blue like that. There would have been lawyers involved, a cease and desist order issued, an injunction of some sort, at the very least a visit from the copyright owners lawyers. Oh, and they both happened in the same state. My BS meter is pinging in "urban myth" territory here, the story everyones heard, everybody knows about but no one has any real details on it to share, not even a newspaper article to back it up.  Did this really happen? Maybe, but my lawyer friends ( 2 public defenders, a federal prosecutor, a state prosecutor and a private lawyer) say very doubtful, doesn't pass the smell test.

It's like those IRS tax relief commercials, " I hadn't paid taxes in over 8 years and just found out "out of the blue" I owe the government $100,000 in back taxes" , really in eight years we're to believe you never filled out a tax form and sent it in, nobody ever said anything to you, no letter or visit from the IRS or the "harassing phone calls" that they claim they will stop if you take advantage of their service, nothing? Same non-existent chain of believabilty.



Jerry

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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