If you use their trademark, you lose
This is a battle that has already been fought and, sadly, lost. Honda and other companies own the rights to their trademarked properties, which include logos and other descriptions. This is settled law. It's so bad that Ford was able to prevent a Ford owner's club from selling a calendar depicting cars their members own. Any effort to fight this would take years, and you're still prohibited from using the trademarks while in dispute.
The easiest way to avoid these problems is to avoid using trademarks like logos and brands in your descriptions. I was a member of a very active Wear watch design group (300k members) and we settled on just leaving logos and brands off published photos and descriptions of our watch faces. That didn't mean we couldn't get away with including them as options that the user could enable. Still verboten of course, but this made it too much of a hassle for the lawyers to chase after.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
This is a battle that has already been fought and, sadly, lost. Honda and other companies own the rights to their trademarked properties, which include logos and other descriptions. This is settled law.
Amen to that. No need to rehash this.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
They may own things they have created but they do not own my model and they do not have the ability to force me to never say their name. You can say something fits a certain vehicle and have it be your own product still. Honda does not automatically own my mode just because it can connect with their car in some way.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
They may own things they have created but they do not own my model...
This is not actually true in many cases.
If you model a Star Wards figure, even if you manually place every single vertex and create the model from scratch, Disney has the IP of the "character likeness" and can force you to not distribute it online, sue you if you sell, etc.
Similarly, a company can use patents and other means of IP protection to protect specific engineering drawings and design ideas.
Whether a specific model violates protected IP can be difficult to judge and might often ultimately have to be decided by a court.
Anyway, I don't think that fighting this by force is the way to go. As I said, we don't even know if Honda specifically requested this law firm to do this. There might have been a misunderstanding, e.g. they might have thought people are selling the designs. 3D printing is still a complete sci-fi for many. We're trying to reach Honda directly to see if we get any more information on this matter.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
[...] You can say something fits a certain vehicle and have it be your own product still.
Perhaps. Check with a lawyer for details. But unfortunately, that doesn't change how Prusa needs to respond to DMCA take down notices in order to avoid significant legal costs. In other words, you may be willing to fight a legal battle, but you can't expect Prusa to fight it for you.
Honda does not automatically own my mode just because it can connect with their car in some way.
No, but they do have trademarks and copyrights. You might win a court case in the end. Who knows? But it's a lengthy and expensive process.
The relevant point is that Prusa, Thingiverse, or any other site has to respond to DMCA take down notices.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
Just for clarification: I don't agree with how the DMCA has been implemented or how corporations (mis)use it. I'm just explaining the situation as I understand it based on experience in a couple of other forums. There are noble stands that we can take individually, but ultimately Prusa bears the risks and costs of fighting for whatever gets posted on the site they are responsible for. Given that this is all settled law, for Prusa to try to fight for this cause doesn't make much business sense.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
Prusa is obviously in a bind here. They could either cave to the Big Bad Corporation or else spend thousands of dollars (or Czech Korona) in legal fees to try to fight it.
Which would you do?
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
I wonder if a big law company sent them a letter asking them to delete all our "project files" from tutorial posts we spent time making for other users.
The Filament Whisperer
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[...] You can say something fits a certain vehicle and have it be your own product still.
Perhaps. Check with a lawyer for details. But unfortunately, that doesn't change how Prusa needs to respond to DMCA take down notices in order to avoid significant legal costs. In other words, you may be willing to fight a legal battle, but you can't expect Prusa to fight it for you.
Honda does not automatically own my mode just because it can connect with their car in some way.
No, but they do have trademarks and copyrights. You might win a court case in the end. Who knows? But it's a lengthy and expensive process.
The relevant point is that Prusa, Thingiverse, or any other site has to respond to DMCA take down notices.
How they responded is exactly the issue though. Deleting the models and removing the ability for the users that uploaded them to see them is ridiculous. They could have just as easily made them not show up on the site and let the original uploaders still have access. I have all my files and everything on my computer but not everyone will. I think their response was way too heavy handed in this case and is why I will upload less models here. If they had hidden the models from view that is understandable but in my opinion it was not handled very well at all. You are free to think they did a great job or even a good job, nothing wrong with that.
And maybe they do need to respond maybe they do not but I can tell you the same model that was up here is up on every other 3d site you mentioned plus more and this is the only one that has taken it down so far. Maybe the others somehow lag weeks or months behind Prusa but that doesn't seem to be the case from what I have seen.
And to the other person anne saying there are only 2 options, that is not true. There are many options but good job trying to artificially reduce them down to make your point I guess.
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Not keeping copies of files uploaded to other persons´ servers may result in effectively losing these files.
Expecting that companies discuss legal affairs in public conversations may require a recalibration of expectations, not a change of the companies´ behaviour.
I try to give answers to the best of my ability, but I am not a 3D printing pro by any means, and anything you do you do at your own risk. BTW: I have no food for…
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I reckon @mikolas-zuza made clear models have not been deleted but hidden for now. Perhaps an even better solution is being worked on at the moment (I have no idea). Something like a ghost status for a model, where it exists but cannot be published. This, I reckon, was what Thingiverse did with a model when they receive a C&D letter (and/or a DMCA takedown request). Youtube has something similar too if your video/audio is found to have any rights issue, it is not deleted but it cannot be made public (or it is made public but not worldwide). They even go to the length they offer some content muted to certain countries where there could be an IP issue but not to the rest of the world.
These are approaches then can both honor the applicable laws and made files available to their creators/uploaders and, perhaps, to a wider but not worldwide audience.
But these changes take time and effort and require management decisions. I am sure after this event we all are going to get a clearer picture of where certain boundaries could be (and that might include some car manufacturers too).
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
I reckon @mikolas-zuza made clear models have not been deleted but hidden for now.
No what they made clear was they were completely hidden from users and I feel like my post was very clear too. Go back over my post to get my point again as I believe it was missed based on the comment there.
It's fine I have other sites to post things at. It is clear the conversation is starved for thought here and people are only interested in defending rather than discussing.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
[...] And maybe they do need to respond maybe they do not but I can tell you the same model that was up here is up on every other 3d site you mentioned plus more and this is the only one that has taken it down so far. Maybe the others somehow lag weeks or months behind Prusa but that doesn't seem to be the case from what I have seen.
Lest anybody think Prusa is the only 3D printing site affected, Thingiverse took down any WWII military models for a while when the lawyers from World of Tanks went after them. I don't know the details, but apparently it was pointed out to WoT that they don't hold any intellectual property for models of tanks, and most were eventually restored. Something similar happened with the Great Lego Purge. Many of the brick collections disappeared. Not all sites will be hit simultaneously, and the lawyers will tend to target the larger sites. When it happens, you can bet the site, whoever it is run by, will take down collections until the details are worked out.
The Great Lego DMCA Takedown of 2019
More info on the Great Lego DMCA Takedown of 2019 and a related reddit discussion. Some have returned or been re-uploaded, and there are certainly other sites available. Nonetheless, the parties hit by takedowns had to respond similarly.
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BTW Honda is a very common name in Japan, so can they have registered the name as their trademark?
They have lawyers. Of course they can.
BTW Honda is a very common name in Japan, so can they have registered the name as their trademark?
Apparently so. Again, I'm no lawyer, but being "close" to the business the registered trademark is in (e.g., automotive accessories for a vehicle brand the registrant has trademarked) is what gets you in trouble. If it were labeled as a flower pot, it might evade notice. However, and this is the key thing, if Honda or another firm issues a DMCA take down notice, most sites are more-or-less required to honor the notice or face legal ramifications. At some point (e.g., WoT trying to take down all WWII tanks from Thingiverse) it might be reversed, but it's not automatic as I understand it.
Some of these questions are "what about..." situations and that's not what Prusa is facing. The requirements for hosting content that triggers a DMCA takedown have nothing to do with "right" or "wrong". It's about complying with the legal requirements. Sure, you can fight it. For a cost.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
Thanks for the reply, but how about having the notification that the print was deleted by an administrator go somewhere - anywhere? I got the notification and so I clicked on it and nothing happened. Clicked on it again... and nothing happened. All the other notifications go somewhere, it wouldn't be too hard to have pretty much this exact explanation on a page somewhere that the notification could link to. Jeez even link to this forum post. Don't leave folks hanging with zero explanation at all and make them have to go all detective mode trying to find out why the model was deleted.
Hey everyone.
This is the first time we were threatened by lawyers of such a big company. They sent us a huge legal document covering every single model they want to be deleted, with an annoying lawyer talk explanation of how they hold the IP and patents even to stuff without a honda logo (e.g. the shape and dimensions of a washer fluid cap).
There was a very tight deadline within which we could respond. We did the only thing we could, without getting into a huge law fight with Honda, we complied.
I want to apologize to everyone who was affected by this and got a model taken down. We're now trying to reach Honda directly to bring these models back. These models are not permanently deleted, but "hidden", we have the ability to bring them back. I suspect Honda might not even be aware this is happening, just a big law company doing "something" so they can bill the hours.
RE: Model deleted by Admin?
BTW Honda is a very common name in Japan, so can they have registered the name as their trademark?
They will have registered the logo and the font to which honda is written and the wing, also all the names of the cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers, pneumatic hammers, scissors and so on.
"Honda Civic" is registred like "Honda HRV" but "Jinzaburo Honda" is not (I hope).
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If your models sharing site is owned and operated by a US based legal entity (it may be worth setting one up just for the this), you can put together a standard DCMA flow form and process on your website and be fully protected. The flow then becomes the company fles a DCMA takedown notice, you take down the content and allow the creator to decide if they want to keep it doen OR respond saying it is fair use exception or whatever and if so, re-instate and then is on the company to takeany further legal proceedings directly eith the creator. The clarity of US laws make digital content hosting much easier. You should consult your lawyers.