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January 17, 2008
Ford: All You Had To Do Was Ask
By Jen
Editor
The Black Mustang Club, after having run afoul of Ford’s copyright policies while trying to publish a members’ calendar, reports that all is now well in the land of the Blue Oval. Having spoken with Ford’s marketing people, the club has gotten the green light to print their calendar, which can be purchased here for 19-and-change. The issue, the manufacturer insists, was never that Ford owners were forbidden from showing off pics their vehicles; it’s when you start trying to charge a fee for images in which their "trademarks" appear that red flags go up. It was purportedly Cafe Press who chickened out on the calendar deal, having gotten the smack-down from Ford in the past. While it sounds like there’s a lot of he-said-she-said going on, Ford and the BMC have made their peace and it appears for now that all 72,000-plus Ford-loving CarDomain members are safe–as long as they don’t start charging admission. Read the explanation from Ford in the BMC forum.
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Anonymous
Jan 18, 2008 at 1:44 am
I wonder if that calendar stuff applies to all vehicles and the outcome about trademarks.No one seems to care about a 20 year old scoob. Maybe I’ll go get 12 snapshots of rotting masterpieces in the farm fields with 300k odometers still runnable and ask buyers to cough up $19.95… will the great Fuji hunt me down on a top secret spy mission..yeah. I bet that’s what would happen.International scoob scandal. Yeah. Make a better movie than the french connection, and then we all go to hollywood and make millions. Awesome.
retroman
Jan 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm
This has been going on for a couple yrs now. I think it’s a shame that Ford has undermined the industry and loyalists that give the Mustang it’s popularity. I agree Ford has to protect it’s trademarks, but they’re going about it too aggressively. Any business that has Mustang or Pony in the name has to change it’s name, even if they have nothing to do with the car in some cases. In others, it’s a question of what to rename a shop that specializes only in Mustangs. It’s a VERY costly move that is hurting the entire Mustang culture. Not only do these businesses face legal costs, they lose the business they could’ve had cause people can’t find them in the phone book. Shelby was doing something similar. Not sure if they still are. They wouldn’t even sell you parts for your car unless you could prove it’s a real Shelby. Most likely that’s done to protect collectors from unknowingly buying a fake, but there are those of us who want a Shelby but can’t afford one.