That's rather comical. MTH is usually suing BLI and vice versa.

On my layout I have some sorta nice HO scale vehicles made by Woodland Scenics. Namely  a 1939 Ford convertible, a 1949 Mercury coupe,  a 1951 Chev hardtop, a 1955 Chevy pick-up, a 1955 Chevy nomad wagon, and a 1957 Plymouth.  Intellectual property is a funny thing.

I would think tha if Woodland Scenics sells enough of those car modles that the lawyers at GM, Chrysler and Ford will send them a letter asking for licensing fee like they've done to the model industry that produces 1/25 scale models of these vehicles. Its not that these companies need the money, its more an accounting issue and they do it to make what was a cost center into a profit center.

Irv

There is a bit of a difference between the GM cars being sold by WS and the buildings MTH is building based on WS model buildings.

In the case of the cars WS is selling a model of a real car. GM is selling a real car. Anyone looking for a real car will NOT be buying a model of a car so WS is NOT taking a GM property and using it to compete with GM. Now if Ford made a FULL size 1955 Chevy and sold that they would get in trouble.  WS and GM are not in compitition with each other.  MTH and WS are.

In the Case of the buildings MTH is taking a model building and making a model building. They are in the same industry.  That is not allowed, because MTH and WS are both model railroad companies.  There is all the difference in the world between the two.  In truth if you look into it in pretty much every case that has gone all the way in court attempting to establish rights for the models by a company that makes full size items has ultimatly failed, but GM has a LOT more money (or UP for that matter) then a model maker so the model maker just caves in and GM or UP uses thier huge budgets and giant law departments to just steam roller the companies and the model companies give in as it is cheeper for them to pay the fee then fight the court case.  This is not the same as another model company building a duplicate of a building you designed to sell models of.  If on the other and WS has made a model of a prototype building then MTH could do what ever it wanted as they would both be modeling the prototype.

Doug

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic in Model Railroad News Magazine, which I reccommend buying or trying to convince your local library to subscribe to. It has a monthly column on scale automobiles (as applicable to model railroading) that is not only very informative about new releases and how well the match the various prototypes, but some of the licensing and other issues surrounding them.

In the case of the Woodland Scenics cars, I think you'll find that they are not quite exact replicas of the cars named - and more importantly, Woodland Scenics is not claiming they are. They are being deliberately designed to resemble a car of that type and era without actually being that particular car. Thus, no licensing issues.

The licensing thing is why Miller Engineering quit offering the animated Goodyear sign. I am modeling a section of Akron OH so the animated rubber company signs are super neat. I contacted Miller about the Goodyear sign and they told me the Goodyear licensing fee had gotten more outrageous each renewal to the point where it wasn't profitable any longer. Goodyear in their petty micro money grubbing has soured my taste for them. Looks like Firestone will be the preeminent rubber shop on the LK&O!

Seems to me that model railroading has a long tradition of copying sucessful products. IHC (if they still exist) has been selling their knock-off versions of the Revell freight station, sandhouse, and fuel tank.  Model Power sells their version of the Atlas passenger station.  Virtually all the buildings in the MTH catalogue are deriviatives of something else.  I suppose my ignorant question is how much revenue does Woodland Scenics stand to loose my MTH copying a pretty generic building which in the case of the town houses was derived from a previous kit that I believe Bob Lunde did when he was creating Magnuson Models?