When a company such as Lionel, MTH, or, long ago, Gilbert, received permission to produce an engine or car with a railroad's name and logo on it did they pay the railroad for the rights or did the railroad pay the toy train manufacturer for the free publicity?
There was a big deal over this about 3 to 5 years ago and MTH is given a lot of credit of getting it straightened out. as BNSF and a couple others wanted royalties for using there names thats where the first heritage series came from with UP I think it was. In fact for a period you had to pay a premium to buy an engine with that name on it seems like this was back in 2007 the more I think about it. Maybe 2006.
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
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Santa Fe, New York Central, and General Motors paid Lionel to put their names on the early F3s.
Bob Nelson
I believe I read something a while back where companies paid to have their names put on the trains.Curtis Baby Ruth ,Shell and Sunoco come to mind.
Although I was thinking more in terms of the railroad companies, such as Amtrak, Pennsylvania, PennCentral, Conrail, Southern Pacific, BNSF, etc. it would make sense for a company like Sunoco to want the advertising.
CTT had an article about the prewar 1680 tank cars some time ago.Shell had replaced Sunoco for a couple of years before WW2.That ended when the *** over ran Europe and the Japanese captured the oil fields in the far east. Interesting how world events can even affect toy production.
As I recall the flap over royalties from railroad heralds on toy trains started with Union Pacific, and yes, great credit is due to Mike Wolf of MTH for straightening it out to everyone's satisfaction. The whole thing was such an embarassment I wouldn't be surprised if someone at UP lost their job over it, it certainly didn't make UP look good.
I can't help but think if Joshua Lionel Cowen was faced with the same situation he would have said...
"What? You don't like all the free advertising and publicity I'm giving you? OK boys, I'll tell you what. You wanna see your name on my trains from now on, I'm not gonna pay YOU, YOU'RE gonna pay ME!"
Kids that grow up on the streets of New York don't take any crap from anyone!
So how does it work? Does Norfolk Southern pay Lionel or the other way round?
Neither, as stated earlier, approx 5 or 6 years ago one or more RR's attempted to collect royalties from all the train manufactures for the use of their names. I believe it was Lionel and Atlas that agreed to pay a royalty to those RR's for the use of their names. Mike Wolf of MTH met with representatives of the RR's in question and came to terms that MTH and other manufactures would be able to use the RR's names without paying any royalties.
Bill T.
from AsterUSA...
4/6/2010 UP Challenger survey ended. ... Negotiations with Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha NE are in progress to obtain the trademark licensing permit required for model manufacturers.
4/13/2010 Union Pacific Railroad Company grants Limited Production and Trademark Certificate to Aster Hobby. Nothing in the way now to go forward with the project.
at least with UP, there are still apparently some agreements that need to be addressed before production. of course, Aster is a Japanese Co., so perhaps that had some bearing.
not only names & logos, but often colors are also copyrighted.
cheers...gary
So they don't pay for the rights, just just have to ask for permission. Thast makes sense, especially for fallen flags that really have little commercial value outside of the nostalgia market.
Yeah, I remember this fiasco. Union Pacific said, and I quote from an article written in Model Railroader magazine that "they didn't want their company's logo displayed on junk". By the time this whole thing got anywhere, retailer's were looking for a $5.00 surcharge to be added to the cost of any engine or piece of rolling stock decorated with the complaining class 1's logos.
What utter nonsense. What corporate "yes man" saw any examples of model trains that in his eyes qualified as JUNK? Seem's that a company so successful in making hundreds of millions of dollars a year in profit's would even stoop this low. How much money did they think they were going to try and strong arm out of the hobby industry by doing this?
Kudo's to Mike Wolfe and the president's of the other affected manufacturers in taking these corporate bullies to court in a successful lawsuit.
So the courts intervened and it was not a voluntary agreement between the model companies and Union Pacific. It would interesting to read a synopsis of the decision.
And I found it:
http://mrr.trains.com/en/sitecore/content/Home/News%20and%20Reviews/MR%20Express/2006/11/MTH%20negotiates%20new%20Union%20Pacific%20licensing%20deal%20for%20all.aspx
and this:
http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/heritage_and_steam/2006/1108_mth.shtml
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