This has nothing to do with safety or DOT issues.

I’m just curious how it is that there are only a handful of body-kit designers such a Bomex and Veilside, but there are dozens of companies that produce those body-kits. Most of the companies people buy body kits from don’t design the kit themselves, but simply clone someone else’s body kit; hence why quality and fitment tend to suck. They buy the kit from the original manufacturer; make a mold off it and start producing their own. We usually end up buying a copy of a copy or sometimes worse. We can’t copy movies, books, music or someone else’s artwork legally (Yes I have Kazaa and rarely buy CDs now), Yet body-kits seem to be exempt from copyright laws. Is it legal? Can I go out, buy a Bomex kit make a mold off it and start selling it legally?

Great question, you could make some serious $$ selling some fake bomex,rudora, widebody kits, etc. If you do find knock off bomex kit drop me a line.

if you find out wether it's legal or not, I'll make ya a website to sell them on, we could go into business with each other :)

Just with my limited knowledge of copyright law, it would be illegal. Sort of like if you get a recipe from somebody and start selling that food without thier permission. If you use thier identical recipe to make money, it's illegal. But say you add/subtract a certain ingredient from the recipe. Then it becomes your recipe. You would probably not want to refer in your advertisements to the kits being a "bomex/veilside" copy or something like that, they might have grounds to sue you for using thier trademark without permission. Hope this helps!

As A Second to that though, one could have the mentality that "It's only breaking the law if you get caught...."

The reason I brought the question up is because I saw what looks like a bomex kit on asylumms site. However it's $100 cheaper than Bomex's price. It could be that they get an incredible price on the kits and pass that savings on to us (yeah right). But if it is a real Bomex kit why don't they call it Bomex rather than some cheesy name like Neo-TYPE-X-ONE

well think of it this way, they make copies rite? But if the major compies tried to sue, then they would win and there would be no more copies. But If u were to copy there design and make a "slight change" then its legal, thats why you look at the shogun front end. Look at the diferent openings on them, there are a bunch of variations between componies

Body kit manufacturers don't bother to patent their designs. Copyrights protect intellectual property like written work, art, etc. A product needs a patent to be protected. But the costs to get a patent are too high to justify due to the short product life of most body kits. In 5 years from now, all these kits will be obsolete. Also, if you make any minor changes (technically 3) it is considered a different product. For example, you might improve the fitment by cutting, add a vent etc. Either way, the issue of proving who made it first is also hard to say when you have so many copies going around. No one is going to bother to try to sue for that, especially if they don't have a patent on the design.

Yeah it is totally legal to get a mold made of a body kit if they dont patent them. But you'll need the initial dollars to get a mold made which could run you some pretty good mola.

I was really curious about this so I decided to do some research and came up on this site:

http://www.copyright.gov/

duh.

After rummaging through the site for a few minutes I finally came up with this:

http://www.copyright.gov/register/va-useful.html

“A “useful article” is an object having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. Examples are clothing, furniture, machinery, dinnerware, and lighting fixtures. An article that is normally part of a useful article may itself be a useful article, for example, an ornamental wheel cover on a vehicle.

Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian aspects of such works of craftsmanship. It may, however, protect any pictorial, graphic, or sculptural authorship that can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of an object. Thus, a useful article may have both copyrightable and uncopyrightable features. For example, a carving on the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair or flatware itself could not.

Some designs of useful articles may qualify for protection under the federal patent law. For further information, contact the Patent and Trademark Office at Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, Washington, D.C. 20231 or via the Internet at www.uspto.gov. The telephone number is (800) 786-9199 and the TTY number is (703) 305-7785. The automated information line is (703) 308-4357.

Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design. “

In other words what eclipse804 said: if it’s a product it has to be patented or otherwise it’s fair game.

-J

hehe I guess I actually learned something from my ethics and professionalism class. We did our report on intellectual property.

KaptainMyke patent pending.

*points to everyone
patent pending!
*points to marcus
patent pending!
*points to ur mammy
pantent pending!

anyone ever see that Simpson's episode when homer was saying "patent pending" to everyone evry 5 seconds about his "trash can" chiropractor back healer invention? that was effin' greeeaaat!

As for the question at hand, it's like this:

Most companies don't make new molds for "knock-off" kits, in fact Asylumms is about the only place that does. Street Weapon, for example, makes the drift kit and of course you can buy it from other people, but it still comes from SW. They have a trade-off program where they sell to other companies lower than wholesale for their kits, so more people can sell their kits and it be cost effective. I ran into this first hand when I ordered a body kit for a Mercury Cougar. We ordered it through Street Weapon, come to find out it was actually coming from Andy's Autosport (they made the style), SW told me they can buy other kits at wholesale and sell them for their price cheaper than if they made their own mold. He said most companies do this, you just never know (ever wonder why it takes 3 weeks to get a front end) So, as long as you had a agreement with the company, legally you are doing nothing wrong. Buy their kits cheap, sell reasonable, and only produce one kind of your own (one mold = cheaper)
This is just my personnel expierence and I thought I'd let you guys in on it.

VIS told me when I got my sides, and asked why there was a type 1 and type 2 battle z. They said, it's because they had to change the name, and then change the actual mold atleast 10% to be legal. That is why some kits don't fit as good. I called them about there being a gap, but they said they knew, and that it could be easily filled. I have yet to get the type 2's on. I finally found a shop to do it. He offered them to be molded for 600, but i don't wanna mold them in. He does the best body work out of anyone around. His custom shaved and molded mini truck has magazine coverage and all. Anyhow, to stay on topic, VIS told me the mold and actual product has to be changed 10% atleast to keep them from being sued.

From what I’ve read so far it seems as though a copyright will protect a body kit design. It is a not a work of art because it is part of a utilitarian object. (The example above from the gov’s website where it says that an ornamental hubcap is a utilitarian object applies) If you wanted to sell knock off body kits you wouldn’t have to change anything for it to be legal as long as you don’t call it by another company’s name and they don’t have a design patent.

Also there are fair usage laws that allow you to borrow other people’s work. But at what point it is no longer their work and what is fair usage is up to a judge to decide.

I asked my girlfriend this question but in terms of the apparel industry (She’s a fashion design major) and as far as she knows there is nothing stopping one designer from ripping off another. She gave me a perfect example: when she goes to buy a purse she could go out a get a bag made by Louis Vuitton or she can go over to Sears and buy a bag that looks identical except it doesn’t have the Vuitton logo. Of course the one at Sears is made of cheap materials in some Mexican sweatshop.

-J

But how would you go about making a mold for a certain kit when 10 to 12 others have already done it and if each of those companies had to modify the bumper by 10% would you change to be legal? You would have buy that bumper from every person that created a mold and modify something different from each mold type. Seems like a luck shot. Because if you changed something and it was the same as another manufacture and they got there hands on yours and sued you for what they say was there copy then what? I really have no knowledge in this matter...but im just using basic common sense. I am probably wrong about this but im just adding in my 2 cents.

I dunno if u have to worry about anyone but the original company. I think only the original mold can get a copy right maybe or something. Because in that case yeah, you'd have to worry bout 10-12 other kits to change 10%, which means, you have a whole new kit basically. VIS said 10% change to be legal I remember. I can't exactly remember if they said 10% from the original mold or not. You could e-mail vis or call them up and I'm sure they could tell you.