Erie Railroad logo trademark?

Does anyone own the rights to the Erie name or logo? I want to officially name my live steam railroad that and make the website ErieRailroad.com, but don't want to get in trouble.

The Erie name would be a trademark, not a copyright. The logo might be copyrighted, although if it's old enough (I think the year is 1928 now) it's fallen out of copyright. Trademarks never expire, but they must be defended against misuse. Truthful use is never misuse. If you have a model of a locomotive which ran on the Erie railroad, you can put the Erie logo on it. If you're talking about the Erie railroad on a web page (again, as long as it's truthful), you can put the Erie logo on it.

Note that some operating railroads think that trademark works differently than that. They might be right, but I don't think they are.

Also note that I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.

I would speculate the following...

Erie went into Erie Lackawanna

Erie Lackawanna went into Conrail

When Conrail was split up...

The CSX freight cars got NYC reporting marks, which suggests that they picked up the rights to "New York Central"

and the NS locomotives got PRR reporting marks, which suggests that they picked up the rights to "Pennsylvania Railroad"

However, an Official Railway Equipment Register from January 2000 (around the split time) shows cars with EL reporting marks (!!!) under the Norfolk Southern registration, which suggests to me that NS got the rights to EL and thus the Erie also.

BUT...

When some railroads went away, the rights to their names stayed with the successor non-railroad companies, or the holding companies that also owned the railroads. For example, Penn Central. So all of the above could be complete hooey.

And keep in mind that DERECO once owned the Erie Lackawanna, and DERECO was a subsidiary of Norfolk and Western.

One final thought... some historical societies might have acquired or been given rights to the names. So a courtesy check with the Erie Lackawanna Historical Society might be in order.

ErieLimited2914 wrote:Does anyone own the rights to the Erie name or logo? I want to officially name my live steam railroad that and make the website ErieRailroad.com, but don't want to get in trouble.

No offense, but no one cares what you name your model railroad... what you do in the privacy of your own basement (or your backyard) is your own business!

Now, if you start a full-size railroad transportation business and try to register the name Erie Railroad for your company, you might run into some opposition (from who, I don't know)...

-otto-

Otto Vondrak wrote:

ErieLimited2914 wrote:Does anyone own the rights to the Erie name or logo? I want to officially name my live steam railroad that and make the website ErieRailroad.com, but don't want to get in trouble.

No offense, but no one cares what you name your model railroad... what you do in the privacy of your own basement (or your backyard) is your own business!

Now, if you start a full-size railroad transportation business and try to register the name Erie Railroad for your company, you might run into some opposition (from who, I don't know)...

-otto-

Yeah I know that. But the thing is, its Live Steam, and I wanted to create a website, and the line is on "commercial" property, so if I could find out who it is, I just thought it would be nice to ask permission just so there are no problems.

Complicating the matter is that you can't sell or transfer a trademark. The trademark applies to the goods or services. If the ownership of the good or service is changed, then so goes control over the trademark. Trademarks also only apply to a limited field of endeavour. Without looking at the categories, I expect there's a "transportation" category. So an Erie museum which isn't running transportation services wouldn't have control over the name "Erie" or "Erie Lackawanna". Whomever is running the same service as the Erie owns the trademark.

A data point which might be of general interest...

http://www.nyow.org/trademark.html

The O&W logo is a Federal registered trademark owned by the Ontario & Western Historical Railway Society, Inc., and it's use without prior permission of the Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society, Inc. is prohibited. By Federal law, the Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society, Inc. must guard and protect the use of its registered trademark in order to maintain its proprietary rights in the trademark.

The O&WHS doesn't charge a licensing fee, but does require a license. As Otto noted though, there should be no worries with a model railroad, regardless of its scale.

Hmmmm.... If the NYO&W still existed the O&WRHS logo would certainly be infringing, particularly since they claim class 39 (Transport) in which the NYO&W would have clearly had their trademark. If you used the NYO&W circle mark without the horizontal bars, you could probably claim that the trademark has gone into the public domain. For their part, the O&WRHS would claim that theirs is a new, distinct mark from the lapsed NYO&W, that they're not profiting from licensing the trademark, and that if you'd only ASKED, they'd have given you a license for free. Given that their first use in commerce date is 1986, they're not claiming to be the owners of the NYO&W circle mark.

The O&WRHS have a pretty strong claim to their trademark. I don't know of anybody who claims the old Erie logo as a trademark, or any new derivative mark.

Hope that helps.

Couple of things to keep in mind. The EL was a subsidiary of DERECO. After the EL bankruptcy, the N&W donated all of their shares of EL stock to the University of Virginia as both a tax write-off and a means of completely severing all ties with the EL. Once the EL estate was completely liquidated, Erie Lackawanna Incorporated was dissolved as well. I think a strong case could be made that no one owns the Erie trademark anymore.

Reporting marks are a different matter. They are simply a private means by which an organization of competing businesses tracks pieces of equipment. The official guide, I am sure, still lists thousands of cars out there with a CR reporting mark that are assigned to both CSX and NS.

Hey guys, thanks for all of your help!

My best guess is that the Erie logo was either transferred to some entity in the Erie Lackawanna
bankruptcy proceedings or trademark or copyright just lapsed into public domain.
If some entity owned it at the time of the bankruptcy, I doubt they have paid money to
keep it renewed.

A logo can be transferred. Look at the Travelers umbrella. When Citigroup acquired
Travelers (or was it the other way around?) in 1998, Citi used the umbrella logo for Citibank and Citigroup.

When Travelers was spun off from Citi in 2002, Citi kept the umbrella logo. A couple of years ago,
Citi sold the logo back to Travelers. Now, Citi has an "umbrella like" red line over the letters CITI
in their logo.

All this while Citi management was destroying the company and the SEC investigators were busy watching
you know what.

Go ahead and use the Erie logo. I think you are safe. Reminisce about the letter E dancing on the
ticker tape as Jay Gould and Daniel Drew work their magic at 50 Church St. The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street lives again!

Andyt293 wrote:Couple of things to keep in mind. The EL was a subsidiary of DERECO. After the EL bankruptcy, the N&W donated all of their shares of EL stock to the University of Virginia as both a tax write-off and a means of completely severing all ties with the EL. Once the EL estate was completely liquidated, Erie Lackawanna Incorporated was dissolved as well. I think a strong case could be made that no one owns the Erie trademark anymore.

Reporting marks are a different matter. They are simply a private means by which an organization of competing businesses tracks pieces of equipment. The official guide, I am sure, still lists thousands of cars out there with a CR reporting mark that are assigned to both CSX and NS.

Agreed on all points. I don't think that even the ELHS could lay claim to the Erie trademark at this point. As others have pointed out, the lack of licensing would also kill any claim on the Erie trademarkl. The NY&GL and NYLE both have Erie-inspired liveries on diesel locomotives they own... and (as far as I know) they didn't have to get a license for the diamond.

NS got all the CR reporting marks (including EL and ERIE) except for NYC, which went to CSX. But, that's different from Trademarks.

RussNelson wrote:Hmmmm.... If the NYO&W still existed the O&WRHS logo would certainly be infringing, particularly since they claim class 39 (Transport) in which the NYO&W would have clearly had their trademark. If you used the NYO&W circle mark without the horizontal bars, you could probably claim that the trademark has gone into the public domain. For their part, the O&WRHS would claim that theirs is a new, distinct mark from the lapsed NYO&W, that they're not profiting from licensing the trademark, and that if you'd only ASKED, they'd have given you a license for free. Given that their first use in commerce date is 1986, they're not claiming to be the owners of the NYO&W circle mark.

The O&WRHS have a pretty strong claim to their trademark. I don't know of anybody who claims the old Erie logo as a trademark, or any new derivative mark.

Hope that helps.

The O&WRHS actually owns the O&W logo/trademark Russ.

http://www.owrhs.org/trademark.html

I'm not sure if anyone owns the old Erie logo anymore though. Your best bet would probably be to contact the Erie-Lackawanna Historical Society and ask them.

http://erielackhs.org/index.php?option= ... e&Itemid=1

This great logo is hosted on the rr-fallenflags site:

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/el/dwg/152-7-537.GIF

its a large crisp scan of an actual vintage Erie drawing!
you wont find a better Erie logo anywhere..

More Erie drawings here:

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/el/dwg/draw.html

Scot