The Baron wrote:Don't know. We know that Hasbro inherited Palitoy's IP rights, but no idea about the actual moulds. More than likely they were donated to the crown when the company was liquidated (see the 'No Man Left Behind' article on the homepage).
i'm pretty sure in 1 of the hasbro Q@A sessions they said they had thr rights for AF but NOT the Shads
surely they must have aquired the rights to the Shadows if they are now producing them ?
were the Red Shadows a seperate trade mark to Action Force ?
these are collectors club tho and not hasbro.
from what i understand the CC borrow the molds from hasbro
Andy1672 wrote:
ok I know this sounds bizarre and please forgive me if I have dreamt this or something !
but .... Im sure I heard that all the molds had been lost at sea or something equally beserk ?
That rumor did surface for Hasbro molds. They were moved around a lot during the 1990's: China, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, ect.
I can't imagin that Hasbro kept the Palitoy molds though. They tend to be a LOT larger than most people imagin, and Hasbro had no reason to keep them around.
edit: When Master Collector uses "new" heads like this one, they pretty much always make a new mold for themselves. That's what they did with the Renagades, Sgt. Slaughter, Shipwreck, the female Doc, and many others.
Draikar wrote:Do you think they made a new head mold or the original head with a ball joint, Dose the mold still exists ? I would like to see a Muton made out of DEEP SIX V2 sold at the joecon as the souvenirs or Roboskull...
this is a good question to askt he club in for the BFTB q and A with the club!
cant believe you we arent taking more advantage of it
As I understand it IP (intellectual property) rights are a bit different than Trademark or Copyrights. Seem's to have more to do with context rather than actual ownership. Like David Lettermen and his top 10 list. There was a huge debate when he switched networks whether or not the rights to the top 10 list belonged to the show, and therefore the network? Or to Lettermen himself. Eventually the rights went to Lettermen.
Not sure exactly how it applies here, but some little domino has to be pushed to make it all happen?
Also, as mentioned above, the rights did lapse. Hasbro didn't need Red Shadow's for anything, and never used them themselves, so they never bothered to pay for them. Just look at all the odd names in the G.I. Joe line since 2000: AGENT Scarlet, SGT. Zap, DREADNOK Buzzer, and so on. That was all because they let the rights to the names lapse.
As for the DDP Shadow's, I think from a legal point of view, those are considered to be "original creations" owned by DDP. Never the less, Hasbro probably owns them now. In print you have a LOT more leeway in what you can get away with. Like Marvel can publish a full issue of Batman, as long as the character likeness or the name does not appear on the cover. Can't recall if they can use the actual name inside, that might be a no no to? But they can have Spiderman hitting "Bruce Wane" on the cover, just so long as the name "Bruce Wane" isn't on the cover, and he's not in a Batman suit.
The question about the rights to the Red Shadow's was indeed asked at a Hasbro panel a few years back, and the answer was essentially "we don't know?" Yes they bought Palitoy, but the "rights" were caught somewhere in the middle. Probably due in large part the fact that the characters where published in Battle Action Force. The publisher probably had some form of rights, however tenuous.
The Baron wrote:Don't know. We know that Hasbro inherited Palitoy's IP rights, but no idea about the actual moulds. More than likely they were donated to the crown when the company was liquidated (see the 'No Man Left Behind' article on the homepage).
i'm pretty sure in 1 of the hasbro Q@A sessions they said they had thr rights for AF but NOT the Shads
surely they must have aquired the rights to the Shadows if they are now producing them ?
were the Red Shadows a seperate trade mark to Action Force ?
Trade marks is a weird area of law. It's like two different "levels". One, is just if you're using it, and it's synonymous with your product, you can claim it as your trade mark, and try to stop others using it. That's when people put "tm" after stuff. S better level of protection is afforded by applying to have a trade mark registered. If granted you are granted it in certain areas you apply for, such as, say, toys. That's when you get an "r" or "reg tm" after stuff. Most companies protect their tm by registering these days. So, say, you couldn't register "action force" as a reg tm in toys - already taken, but you might be able to register action force as a tm in, say, medicine! Bizarre, I know!
Alte Volat
"BFTB Elite??? Moi??? Ooooooo, Missus - Titter ye not!"
True Hasbro story: About 4 or 5 years ago at one of the Con's I asked the Hasbro panel about one of my personal favorite characters, Outback. Big Bawler had recently come out, and was clearly meant to be Outback, so I wanted to know what happened.
Turned out that at the time they couldn't use the name "Outback" because the restaurant "Outback Steakhouse" bought up all the rights to the name. They trade marked, and copyrighted every version they could get their hands on: toys, movies, books, TV show's, EVERYTHING.
Through the rest of the panel, everything they didn't have the rights to, or somehow didn't have an answer for, "Outback Steakhouse bought those rights." They used it to answer like 8 more questions.
