Issue #848 > March 3, 2015
by Ralph Grabowski
A long-time reader had this question to ask:
I am not looking for legal advice, but I think this question may be an easy on for you since you are pretty deep in this business. We are developing a parts library for Autodesk software. The parts already exists from a manufacturer, but don't work properly.
Can we protect our data through trademark or copyright? We have spent significant hours on this content and unfortunately we have to share our models with others; they can easily take and use our custom content. Also, does Autodesk have any claim to anything we do as far as content?
- M. R.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television. What I know is what I have picked up over the years reading about legal actions and case materials, plus I took Law 11 in high school.
About Trademarks
Trademarks apply to names, such as the name of your company or a product your company produces. Anyone can claim a trademark; to register a trademark, however, you need to file the name with your government, who will ensure it is unique to your industry. Setting a plain trademark is as simple as writing the following line of text in your documentation, Web site, and so on:
"ProductName" is a trademark of My Company Ltd.
About Copyright
Copyright applies to just about everything else. You can claim copyright on anything you produce -- symbols in your case, books and newsletters in my case. Specifying a copyright is as simple as writing this line of text:
Copyright 2015 by My Company Ltd.
Basic Trademark and Copyright Protection
Let's now turn to the manufacturer whose products you are replicating as CAD symbols. They could claim a legal right to the symbols you developed. Whether they have a legal standing is irrelevant at the start of the case, because anyone can threaten legal action. A reason behind the law suit threat could be as simplistic as someone inside the firm being embarrassed that you are doing a better job. (This is the reason I've thrice been theatened with law suits: the threatening party was embarrassed.)
More realistically, however, the firm could sue because they own the trademark on the names of the products you are digitally recreating, as well as the copyright on their designs. I am currently involved as an expert consultant on a case where employees left a design firm allegedly taking .dwg files with them, and setting up a competing firm using the purloined drawings. The law suit is not over the drawings per se, but the designs the drawings represent.
To protect yourself against possible legal action , you can take these basic steps:
- Contact the manufacturer and get permission in writing to design the symbols with their product names
- Make the symbols generic enough that the firm cannot claim ownership
As for the manufacturer's reaction, however, it depends on how they see your action -- as a threat or as an opportunity. Sell it to them as an opportunity, so that designers will spec their products more easily, and so they sell more of their products.
As for Autodesk, they usually only take action against someone like you when their product names are used inappropriately. You cannot name your product "AutoCAD XYZ Symbols," because this implies the symbols are part of AutoCAD and were produced by Autodesk. If you use another company's registered or trademarked name, you have to write it like this:
XYZ Symbols for AutoCAD
Remember that it is in Autodesk's best interest that there be lots of add-ons for their software, so they will like what you are doing.
To prevent a hassle-lawyer's letter, include the following line in your printed and online documents. It covers you for casual use of all trademarks (like me mentioning AutoCAD in this article):
All brand names and product names mentioned in this book [or software or whatever] are trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.
(A service mark is a name that identifies a service, such as dry cleaning or flower delivery service -- anything where no goods are sold.) One exception: titles cannot be copyright, and so there can be an "Inside AutoCAD" book from one publisher and a different book called "Inside AutoCAD" from another.
Preventing Copying
As for preventing copying of your symbols, no luck. Anyone can copy your symbols, just like they copy my ebooks, and neither you nor I can halt them. The only thing that (rarely) works is to send a polite letter asking the pirates to stop, explaining to them that they are using your copyrighted content illegally. Nearly all will ignore you; a few might protest that they are doing nothing wrong.
Getting back to the case of the purloined drawings. It was easy enough for me to show the prosecuting lawyer that the .dwg files contained a file creation date prior to the date on which now-ex-employees left the first firm.
What DWG files lack, however, is a date and time stamp for every added entity -- and this frustrates lawyers, who like to have a clear timeline of events to prove that step #1 occurred before step #2. Using handles, we can see the order in which entities were added to the .dwg file. So we can say that entity #2 was added after entity #1, but we don't know when. After two years, the case is still in limbo, and I am not sure of its current status.
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And One More Thing...
You might recall that Canon purchased Oce a couple of years ago, and last week Canon announced some new Oce plotters. One of them is the Oce ColorWave 500 large-format printer that outputs 225 color or black-white D-size prints an hour [I wonder if they meant "per day" because per-hour would mean 3.25 big prints per second] from four media rolls, and also copies and scans documents. Its user interface is meant for multiple users in a small department or firm.
The printer ships this month, but doesn't have a Web page set up yet -- except for this press release, http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/about_canon/newsroom?pageKeyCode=pressreldetail&docId=0901e02480e654ce
Even More News
WorldCAD Access is blogging nearly every day about the CAD industry and tips on using hardware. (The feed is available on RSS and through email alerts.) The following articles appeared during the last week:
- foto of the sunday: Museum of Anthropology
- This is why the Omidyars of the world can't run publications
- Why my desktop needs 4-5 monitors
On Twitter, @upfrontezine offers CAD news, late-breaking updates, and wry commentary throughout the day.
To donate to this newsletter's operation through PayPal, click http://www.upfrontezine.com and then choose the Donate $25 (personal) or Donate $500 (corporate) button.
Letters to the Editor
Re: Open Design Alliance and Its Future
Your interview has just been published in Russian: http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=17551. The title has been adapted to the eyes of Russian audience; it says (roughly): "The non-Autodesk-DWG is now being steered by Russians."
- David Levin
isicad
Re: What Dassault plans for its future
I just read your article on Dassault's plans at http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/02/what-dassault-plans-for-its-future.html.
I think that Mr. Charles' statement confirms my belief that 3D modeling software has become a commodity. Notice that there's no mention of improving 3D modeling software -- only ramblings about the opportunities in civil engineering, biology, chemistry, material science, etc. And whatever the heck a "a comprehensive offering for businesses and people on upstream experience thinking" is.
I design machines. I need, have, and pay for software to do that. When the company that supplies that software stops focusing on machine design and stops spending money developing it, they are making a statement that it's finished and there's nothing more to do. It's a mature product. That's when the price should begin to come down.
Dassault is not going to do that. Solidworks is a cash cow, and now they don't need to spend money developing it but they can still convince people to pay their price. They can funnel all that money into developing other products. I understand that's how it works, because that's how my customers work regarding the products that I design for them.
But as soon as the development on a product stops, other companies begin catching up and offering "me-too" knockoffs and copies. In the manufacturing world, eventually someone in China builds an adequate copy and sells it for 25% or 10% and customers go there. The original manufacturer is usually blindsided by this, and sputters and rants and rages, finally abandons the product line, and then tries to find something else to build. I wonder if we're close to this on 3D modeling software for mechanical. I wonder if I'll like it.
I feel a little bit like I did some years back when I used Microstation, and they gradually stopped pretending to care about mechanical stuff, and morphed into (or back into) a civil-engineering and mapping company. I'm not actually sure what they do. It's not tools for mechanical design, so I don't care. And I suspect that in about five years, I won't care what Dassault is up to, either.
- Jess Davis, president
Davis Precision Design, Inc.
Notable Quotable
"You can't be nimble if you tool big."
- John 'Jay' Burton Rogers, LocalMotors
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/02/local-motors-and-the-radical-redesign-of-business.html
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