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Originally Posted by lancelot link
There was also a french guy building Ferrari replicas around that time ..he was using Ferrari parts and they were being registered as Ferrari's ...He was being taken to court by Ferrari , but it was looking like he might win on a technicality ....Just before the case was finished , he ''committed suicide'' in a hotel room ...
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My memory is fading; I'd thought that he'd had his corporate counsel pass 'his' designs through the French Copyright Office (the Bureau de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique) to establish their creation date, and that the paper trail was sufficient to act as its own ruling on the case, if you will. Once the copyright's been registered, the legal presumption (in most jurisdictions) is that the Offices Patent have performed their due diligence, and that therefore the copyrighted design is its own intellectual property. (Caveat / Disclaimer: I'm not schooled in Jurisprudence [nor in anything of particular value, really], and on the whole, am probably only slightly above the intelligence level of an Austin Allegro's connecting rods, and marginally less illuminating than ___________ [insert your favourite Lucas product here] ).
My off-the-cuff jest regarding making molds directly from a God-awfully expensive motorcar was doubtless in poor taste for varied reasons, but it does, I believe, beg the question, "what's creative and what's forgery?" I'd think (and here, I mean anyone with a bit of common sense, and not necessarily any bureaucrat, of course) that a panel beater who'd constructed his or her own bucks and then hammered sheets to form a motorcar body should have a rather fair margin of leeway regarding copyright, since the creative process is the manufacture of something decidedly original. Likewise, I'd expect that someone who'd sculpted their own model, in whatsoever medium or media they chose, and drew production moulds from that model, should likewise enjoy sufficient "protection" of their intellectual property - no matter against which existing designs their inspiration might have sprung - that their local Copyright Offices would scarce consider denying them the proper paperwork and magic numbers with which they might be assured that they could carry on their business without some overly litigious billion dollar corporation laying claim that the poor chap was infringing upon their Trade (and I'd further suspect that, in the event that they
did face such a situation, that a countersuit for Restraint Of Trade would nearly instantly convince the larger corporation's legal staff to seek out and to pursue a less well-protected kit car maker).
Lastly, before one or all of you chaps suggest it, I will - as soon as I click the "post" button - change my username here to ThatAmericanPrattler.
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