Quoted Text
Vance,
What of the tradedress/tradmark issue? If it looks like their logo, isn't that still a copyright violation on whomever uses it without permission?
yes, but as mentioned earlier, there are "fair use" clauses.
also, trademarking and copyrighting are, like copyrighting and patenting, two different things.
trademarking is a lot stricter that copyrighting, which means the "fair use" of it is a lot more restricted as well.
the copyright exists regardless of the trademark question. if the trademark question was resolved, the copyright on the creation would still exist unchanged.
conversely, if the copyright is released for general use by the owner of it, it does not at all affect the fact that someone could get sued for using a trademark without permission.
note that changing the size or even misspelling a trademark is generally insufficient to get around trademarking, which means making it "coko-cola" or "coka-cola" instead of "coca-cola" doesn't protect you if it still has the same swirly white script on a red background.
However, Coke is not going to create bad PR for themselves by chasing down modelers who make something like this and distribute it on a sight like this, and neither is Pepsi. In fact, they are going to like the free product placement. But once people start making a profit by including their logos in a boxed kit that is for sale and therefor used as a gimmick to increase sales, then they might get pissy.
