The Little World

” Ha Ha Ha! I am master in my own workshop and I laugh to scorn at your copyright! Paugh! ”

Which will make for interesting times if someone actually does go me for pinching artwork that belongs to them. Or if someone decides that I am making fake products in an effort to defraud a collector’s market. Or if the question of intellectual property is pursued from Europe to Australia.

All these three ideas occurred to me when I looked at some reproduced toy boxes at our local collector’s club. One of the expert members got together with a commercial printing firm to reproduce some of the original toy boxes in his possession – boxes that would enhance his collection of die-cast model cars. It is a charming idea, and one that probably makes his display room look wonderful, but I wondered at the final legality of it.

The firm that produced the original toys and boxes for them is still going, albeit sold on through several buyers to a new corporate entities. The old models are now well into the collector’s game, and so are the original boxes that contained them. Our club man has decided to make the reproduction boxes from the originals with all the wrinkles and tears that may have accumulated in 60 years and to supply them to other collectors here in Australia and overseas.

A dedicated historian of the toys will be able to see instantly that these are reproductions – indeed they may have some note to this effect printed on them – and can hardly claim fraud. The owners of the intellectual property rights to the designs and artwork, on the other hand, may still have some attachment to them. And this is where the danger lies – we all remember the Union Pacific railroad vs the model train makers debacle in 2004. Trade marks and idle lawyers make for trouble.

I don’t think our dedicated die-cast collector is doing much wrong to the world – and he is getting a great deal of enjoyment out of his innocent hobby. But then I am not someone who is sifting through old patent and copyright papers for the new owners of the old company…

Note: For my Little World I do print and post signs as part of the dioramas or layouts that have real names; Safeways, Loblaws, The Canadian Pacific Railway, the RCAF. So far I have not had a nasty letter from them as I do not sell their name to others.