Harmony Gold shenanigans aside, I would want this if they were making more than 1000 of them.
Not-Jetfire (Macross Robotech VF-1S God of Flame) with Fast Pack Armour from Kitzconcept
- Thread starter PrimalxConvoy
- Start date
And if it was cheaper and bigger?
No, because Hasbro can't trademark a deco.No you interpreted me right anyway. I thought he was a direct carry over with Autobot logos.
So that does bring it back around then. Minus the logos, is this actually a Hasbro color scheme? Could Hasbro sue HG?
You can slap a TF deco on any other toy, and as long as you weren't marketing it as being related to Transformers in general or that character in specific in any way, so they couldn't claim "market confusion", Hasbro couldn't do a damn thing about it.
It wouldn't be a trademark, it would be a copyright, and you can copyright pictorial and graphic works. We've also heard from Hasbro directly in similar instances - the repaint of Classics Mirage into Fracture was an example they discussed: not only did they have to change her name, they had to change up the color layout to further differentiate it to the Gobots characters because while they owned Gobots, someone else owned a different set of rights that could have impacted the toy (complicated by the race team ownership of the original livery).
I'd argue that while Hasbro would be hard-pressed to sue over a "red and blue semi-truck", they could have better luck with some of the more original designs. All of that comes back around to the original Jetfire which Hasbro paid to license and then (as Randy pointed out) made intentional deco changes to for their licensed toy. I think the real question here is, if this deco has never appeared in official Macross/Robotech materials, then it's clearly meant as a nod to the Hasbro-licensed Jetfire and could be impinging on their copyright. This isn't "slapping a deco" on something different. This is literally painting a Valkyrie to look like Jetfire. While they can't do much about KOs in China, HG is in the US and a lot easier to get at.
In the end, Hasbro might not really care since they likely have no intention of reissuing a Valkyrie-based Jetfire, but I think they'd have a better case against HG than HG did against them a few years ago.
On the flip-side, the above linked article says that "Mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring" are not covered under Copyright, so maybe that's what protects HG - the question is does "coloring" refer only to "typographic ornamentation" (which the Jetfire deco is not), or to any recoloring?
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If that is true, it would only be so if Hasbro owned the rights legally. Sometimes, companies err on the side of caution, even if they are legally in the clear, as was the case with Takara using the Gobot names for the G1 Minibot recoloured boxed set. Even so, Takara changed the names for fear of any costly legal battles (regardless of whether they would win it).
However, from my own limited research, Hasbro doesn't own the rights to such decos (or has found it difficult in proving as such), which is why 3P and KO versions of Transformers have flourished. If you're interested in this, the first page in this thread below has info relating to IP rights, copyright, etc:
- https://www.allspark.com/forums/threads/the-knock-off-transformers-thread.134/
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