To make a relation here - you do realize that all of those scale car models (including toys) you can get at your local hobby shop are licensed from the auto manufacturers!  Some time back the auto industry forced the model makers to require licensing before they could make a scale representation for sale.  Some model makers still release models without - and are usually taken to court.  Apart from logos and other trademarks, I don't know what this falls under exactly.  It may still be trademark or copyright of, if anything, the design and specifications.

So Lockheed is just doing the same thing - and might attempt to force such a licensing scheme on anyone who wishes to sell 3D representations of their 'products'.  How this might impact the CG movie industry is unknown.  Most likely, the film studios bring in the lawyers to make sure that any such use of an object is covered and licensed from the manufacturer twenty times in a stack of paper six feet high.

The entire thing does get ridiculous when one contemplates it.  Here's Lockheed, making billions and getting Federal government contracts (guess where the government gets its funds - hmmm) and they are squashing a few people making probably, oh my, a couple thousand dollars selling 3D model representations without direct trademark infringements (logos and names and such).  Once again, big business making a point to go out of its way to step on an anthill.

Just remember - UniversalCorp, OCP, Zorg, et al.  There are safeguards, but we never left the 19th century industrial revolution big-business mentality.  Now you might have a union, the boss might not send an army to squash a strike, and governments generally try to limit the greediness of large corporations, but that doesn't mean that acquisition, zealousness, and abject hatred of the consumer (the people that they think owe them) don't still exist (M$, Sony, RIAA, MPAA, and on and on).

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone