6 ms·

Ferrari Sued a Used Car Dealer for $2.2M over a Replica. It Didn't Go Well

81 points by rmason 3y ago

Simulacra 3y ago
I've heard of the company going after people from modifying their cars and not just strikes me as wrong. If you buy a Ferrari, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it.
- thefounder 3y ago
  You should tell that to the tech people. They have a thing named DRM and they may "go to jail" if they try to modify even the software not to mention the hardware. They are treated like criminals.
  - kbenson 3y ago
    To my knowledge the difference that allows that is that you license the software, you purchase the car. You can purchase software, it's just not the common case. Companies but other companies and parchase the software that they developed along with that, and scammers purchase the software of popular browser extensions so they can use them against the existing user base (which are licensed, even if implicitly). Evem with open source you're almost always using software under a license. For the vast majority of people, the only software they'll ever actually own is something they wrote themselves.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      When you purchase a car, you're not allowed to build copies of that car and sell them. You purchase the design of a car the same way you purchase a copy of software. You own the physical storage the software comes on, the same way you own the physical metal, rubber, and plastic of the car, but the design isn't yours. Why are we allowed to look under the hood of a car we buy and even install our own modifications, but when we purchase software? Why can we alter and replace metal frames, but not alter the storage cells on our phones and computers?
      - kbenson 3y ago
        My understanding is that you are allowed to sell copies of a car, as long as you don't advertise it as the thing you're copying, except for anything that is patented, for which you need to get a license. That's the point (or one of them) of a patent, to prevent people from making legal copies for a time period as a reward to the inventor and promote invention of novel things. Isnt that what this was about? The very bad Ferrari stickers instead of emblems worked in favor of the person sued, but if there was something indicating it absolutely wasn't a Ferrari there wouldn't have been any question at all.
        Retric 3y ago
        Patents, trademarks, and copyright can all be issues with making duplicates of something. Making and selling “Fake” handbags which you make really clear are fakes can result in prison. The concern are twofold, someone buying it may try and resell the items as “real” or someone seeing a poor copy with another brands trademark on it can dilute the brand. This is less of a concern if the item looks nothing like any of the actual products and isn’t being sold. Tie-dying a 5$ tote bag and stenciling Chloé, Burberry, Gucci, and a few other brand names at the same time is clearly not trying to be a fake.
        kbenson 3y ago
        > Making and selling “Fake” handbags which you make really clear are fakes can result in prison. The concern are twofold, someone buying it may try and resell the items as “real” or someone seeing a poor copy with another brands trademark on it can dilute the brand. I'm pretty sure the issue there is whether the item itself advertises that it is something it's not, even if you're clear it's not a legitimate copy, and also whether you are doing it in furtherance of a crime. Making knock off Gucci bags and selling them as fakes when you're sure they're being bought by middlemen to sell as authentic (at least when your main purpose is to sell to this market and they can "prove" it), could possibly make you complicit (depending on what they can show in court). In that specific case, even leaving off any branding (to make it easier for someone to add fake branding later) could possibly be found complicit, if they could prove that it was for the purpose of furthering the crime (as I understand it). I'm not going to act like companies and prosecute rs don't overstep their bounds/rights/authority, but I think it's pretty clear why some of these cases and laws exist (even if we might think they aren't quite the right response to the problem in some cases).
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > You should tell that to the tech people. They have a thing named DRM and they may "go to jail" if they try to modify even the software not to mention the hardware. They are treated like criminals. In my experience many tech people are quite opposed to DRM, and of those who do have the skills to develop tools for circumventing DRM mechanisms (which is of course only a small fraction of the tech people), there exist quite a few people who actually do invest a good deal of their free time to secretly develop such semi-legal tools.
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      Every time I see a conflation between "executives at giant companies in the tech industry" and "actual tech/engineering workers", somehow it always seem to be to protect the former. It's weird, imagine if the actions of McDonalds was supposed to reflect "the fast food people", or the action of Disney was supposed to reflect "animators", etc.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- gnopgnip 3y ago
  That is a different situation from taking another car and putting a Ferrari logo on it though
- xoxxala 3y ago
  Corporations don’t want anyone to actually own anything anymore. And Ferrari has nothing on John Deere.
- m463 3y ago
  Pretty sure John Carmack's heavily modified ferrari was fine.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/957301883365937152 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/957301883365937152 John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack I was not welcome at the Ferrari dealership because of all the crazy turbo modifications on my cars · Jan 27, 2018 · 9:18 AM
latchkey 3y ago
Whistlindiesel reliability tested and torched his, and Ferrari didn't do anything.
- seabird 3y ago
  WhistlinDiesel has enough money to fight them on it, would fight them on it, and would make money doing it. The dorks at Ferrari that do this lawsuit trolling knew it would probably blow up in their face if they tried anything.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    I dunno, they sued a guy who owns a car dealership for buying a fakerrari.
    - seabird 3y ago
      WhistlinDiesel turns controversy into ad revenue. The ad revenue from such a suit would allow him to remain in court pretty much indefinitely, but Ferrari doesn't have that luxury. He's also the same guy that burned up a Ferrari bombing it through a harvested field, so being "reasonable" (as a lot of people would define it) isn't really his thing. There's no scenario where this doesn't result in a lot of egg on Ferrari's face if they actually went after him for it.
- trollied 3y ago
  The video, if anyone is interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0&t=3s
  - rasz 3y ago
    Oh, its that idiot. TLDR: Burned two cars down by driving hard to the point of exhausts going red hot and then stopping in a field filled with easily flammable straw. All for clicks.
- kart23 3y ago
thih9 3y ago
In the article’s body, one paragraph is present twice, the second time paraphrased. Was that because of some AI tool? Or perhaps wrong Ctrl+V during editing? Interesting in any case. > “It is a rather unusual fact that an intellectual property case ends up in criminal proceedings ,” the businessman’s lawyer, María Muiño González, told El Pais. The defense has spent three years “analyzing the ins and outs of the brand” and maintains that the accused “never wanted to appear to have a real Ferrari.” “The emblems were crude and you could see that they were simple stickers,” she explains, “and I wasn’t going to sell it either; “He had it in his possession for only 12 days until it was seized.” > “It’s quite unusual for an intellectual property case to escalate into criminal proceedings,” noted the businessman’s lawyer, María Muiño González, told El Pais. The defense team invested three years in closely examining the brand and firmly asserted that the accused never had any intention of making the vehicle resemble a genuine Ferrari. “The emblems were crude, and you could clearly see that they were basic stickers,” she said. “Furthermore, there were no plans to sell it; he had it in his possession for only 12 days before it was seized.”
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Interesting. Both versions seem to have structural/grammatical errors in different places, and both feel machine-generated. Curiously, the different wording of each version also affects what's supposed to be direct quotes, which makes me irrationally angry for some reason. I think because once you allow yourself to paraphrase quotations that you'll have readers believe are verbatim, you may as well make them all up.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Rapid growth of ‘news’ sites using AI tools like ChatGPT is driving the spread of misinformation https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/02/rapid-growth-of-news-sites-using-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-is-driving-the-spread-of-misinforma https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/02/rapid-growth-of-new...
    - akhosravian 3y ago
      El Pais is a well knownand reasonably reputable Spanish newspaper; at a tier equivalent to the New York Times or Wall Street journal in the US. It is unlikely they are producing AI fabrications of this sort.
everyone 3y ago
[flagged]
- avalys 3y ago
  Most of the human population could be described as a "pointless CO2 emitter".
  - hartator 3y ago
    We also all breathe; so we emit CO2 at each exhale.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      That was GP's point.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        So... not pointless? Sorry I get confused. :)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Plant here. While you may find CO2 pointless we view air the same way. Keep sending us your valuable CO2 and we'll keep sending you pointless air
  - aio2 3y ago
    thank you plant, very cool
- saiya-jin 3y ago
mrandish 3y ago
I'm not clear on what legal grounds Ferrari could even make a claim here. The owner of the custom made look-alike car didn't create the car and never tried to sell the car. If Ferrari could prove that the car was substantially similar enough to infringe on their trademarked design AND likely to cause confusion, they might be able to impound the car and have it destroyed, similar to fake Rolex watches or Mickey Mouse t-shirts. But collecting punitive damages or prison time seems crazy. Maybe Spanish law is weirdly different but most western nations generally conform to WTO standards around IP. I suspect we're not getting the whole story here.
- jjeaff 3y ago
  I have never heard of any company being able to impound fake products from the end consumers either. It's possible they have never tried, but normally they are only seizing product en masse from people selling it.
  - CaptainZapp 3y ago
    > I have never heard of any company being able to impound fake products from the end consumers either. Try importing a fake Gucci bag that you bought cheaply at Patbong Road in Bangkok to Italy. It won't only be impounded you'll also be hit with a fine in the 1000s of Euro. Same in France. Other countries may not be that excessive but you can be sure that your fake Rolex is toast when they catch it at customs. Sure, it's not the companies impounding the fakes but customs on their behalf.
technothrasher 3y ago
Ferrari is a particularly litigious company. One of my good friends who is an independent Ferrari mechanic got a C&D from them for having the image of a Ferrari dealer sign show up when you searched him on Facebook. He didn't even post it. It was a local driver's group who tagged him in the post for an event that was sponsored by said dealer. He briefly tried to engage with their lawyers and explain it really had nothing to do with him, but was basically told they would bankrupt him unless he complied with their wishes to take down the Facebook post that wasn't his. They have harassed him in the past for advertising that he fixes Ferraris, even though it has been settled law for decades that this is legal.
- SpaceL10n 3y ago
  I can't imagine they're making their money on unit sales, and Ferrari merchandise isn't exactly flying off the shelves... so where else do they make money?
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    Their 2022 net income is 1 billion on 5 billion revenue, with that i think your imagination is just wrong. Ferrari is public and not a part of a larger car company.
  - canadianfella 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Pat_Murph 3y ago
    In Q2 of 2023. Just the commercial and brand revenue were 147 million up 18% from previous year. Seems like the Ferrari merch is actually flying off the shelves. Their finanacials are easily accessible for everyone to see. If you had looked them up before commenting. You wouldn't have been wrong on every single thing you sayed. https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/corporate/articles/ferrari-upgrades-2023-guidance-on-exceptional-q2-2023-results-and-business-outlook https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/corporate/articles/ferrari-upg...
simne 3y ago
I've hear very similar case approx decade ago, when one small business made extremely ugly cheap doll, which from long distance remembers Russian Cheburashka. And judge decided, it is bad joke on intellectual property, and forbid its sells in country and pay moral penalty. What I learn from that case, it is sure important for me, which side I support, but it is extremely bad idea, to try impose my point of view to judge.

81 points by rmason 3y ago

I've heard of the company going after people from modifying their cars and not just strikes me as wrong. If you buy a Ferrari, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it.

thefounder 3y ago
You should tell that to the tech people. They have a thing named DRM and they may "go to jail" if they try to modify even the software not to mention the hardware. They are treated like criminals.
- kbenson 3y ago
  To my knowledge the difference that allows that is that you license the software, you purchase the car. You can purchase software, it's just not the common case. Companies but other companies and parchase the software that they developed along with that, and scammers purchase the software of popular browser extensions so they can use them against the existing user base (which are licensed, even if implicitly). Evem with open source you're almost always using software under a license. For the vast majority of people, the only software they'll ever actually own is something they wrote themselves.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    When you purchase a car, you're not allowed to build copies of that car and sell them. You purchase the design of a car the same way you purchase a copy of software. You own the physical storage the software comes on, the same way you own the physical metal, rubber, and plastic of the car, but the design isn't yours. Why are we allowed to look under the hood of a car we buy and even install our own modifications, but when we purchase software? Why can we alter and replace metal frames, but not alter the storage cells on our phones and computers?
    - kbenson 3y ago
      My understanding is that you are allowed to sell copies of a car, as long as you don't advertise it as the thing you're copying, except for anything that is patented, for which you need to get a license. That's the point (or one of them) of a patent, to prevent people from making legal copies for a time period as a reward to the inventor and promote invention of novel things. Isnt that what this was about? The very bad Ferrari stickers instead of emblems worked in favor of the person sued, but if there was something indicating it absolutely wasn't a Ferrari there wouldn't have been any question at all.
      - Retric 3y ago
        Patents, trademarks, and copyright can all be issues with making duplicates of something. Making and selling “Fake” handbags which you make really clear are fakes can result in prison. The concern are twofold, someone buying it may try and resell the items as “real” or someone seeing a poor copy with another brands trademark on it can dilute the brand. This is less of a concern if the item looks nothing like any of the actual products and isn’t being sold. Tie-dying a 5$ tote bag and stenciling Chloé, Burberry, Gucci, and a few other brand names at the same time is clearly not trying to be a fake.
        kbenson 3y ago
        > Making and selling “Fake” handbags which you make really clear are fakes can result in prison. The concern are twofold, someone buying it may try and resell the items as “real” or someone seeing a poor copy with another brands trademark on it can dilute the brand. I'm pretty sure the issue there is whether the item itself advertises that it is something it's not, even if you're clear it's not a legitimate copy, and also whether you are doing it in furtherance of a crime. Making knock off Gucci bags and selling them as fakes when you're sure they're being bought by middlemen to sell as authentic (at least when your main purpose is to sell to this market and they can "prove" it), could possibly make you complicit (depending on what they can show in court). In that specific case, even leaving off any branding (to make it easier for someone to add fake branding later) could possibly be found complicit, if they could prove that it was for the purpose of furthering the crime (as I understand it). I'm not going to act like companies and prosecute rs don't overstep their bounds/rights/authority, but I think it's pretty clear why some of these cases and laws exist (even if we might think they aren't quite the right response to the problem in some cases).
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > You should tell that to the tech people. They have a thing named DRM and they may "go to jail" if they try to modify even the software not to mention the hardware. They are treated like criminals. In my experience many tech people are quite opposed to DRM, and of those who do have the skills to develop tools for circumventing DRM mechanisms (which is of course only a small fraction of the tech people), there exist quite a few people who actually do invest a good deal of their free time to secretly develop such semi-legal tools.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    Every time I see a conflation between "executives at giant companies in the tech industry" and "actual tech/engineering workers", somehow it always seem to be to protect the former. It's weird, imagine if the actions of McDonalds was supposed to reflect "the fast food people", or the action of Disney was supposed to reflect "animators", etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gnopgnip 3y ago
That is a different situation from taking another car and putting a Ferrari logo on it though
xoxxala 3y ago
Corporations don’t want anyone to actually own anything anymore. And Ferrari has nothing on John Deere.
m463 3y ago
Pretty sure John Carmack's heavily modified ferrari was fine.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/957301883365937152 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/957301883365937152 John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack I was not welcome at the Ferrari dealership because of all the crazy turbo modifications on my cars · Jan 27, 2018 · 9:18 AM

latchkey 3y ago

Whistlindiesel reliability tested and torched his, and Ferrari didn't do anything.

seabird 3y ago
WhistlinDiesel has enough money to fight them on it, would fight them on it, and would make money doing it. The dorks at Ferrari that do this lawsuit trolling knew it would probably blow up in their face if they tried anything.
- latchkey 3y ago
  I dunno, they sued a guy who owns a car dealership for buying a fakerrari.
  - seabird 3y ago
    WhistlinDiesel turns controversy into ad revenue. The ad revenue from such a suit would allow him to remain in court pretty much indefinitely, but Ferrari doesn't have that luxury. He's also the same guy that burned up a Ferrari bombing it through a harvested field, so being "reasonable" (as a lot of people would define it) isn't really his thing. There's no scenario where this doesn't result in a lot of egg on Ferrari's face if they actually went after him for it.
trollied 3y ago
The video, if anyone is interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0&t=3s
- rasz 3y ago
  Oh, its that idiot. TLDR: Burned two cars down by driving hard to the point of exhausts going red hot and then stopping in a field filled with easily flammable straw. All for clicks.
kart23 3y ago

thih9 3y ago

In the article’s body, one paragraph is present twice, the second time paraphrased. Was that because of some AI tool? Or perhaps wrong Ctrl+V during editing? Interesting in any case. > “It is a rather unusual fact that an intellectual property case ends up in criminal proceedings ,” the businessman’s lawyer, María Muiño González, told El Pais. The defense has spent three years “analyzing the ins and outs of the brand” and maintains that the accused “never wanted to appear to have a real Ferrari.” “The emblems were crude and you could see that they were simple stickers,” she explains, “and I wasn’t going to sell it either; “He had it in his possession for only 12 days until it was seized.” > “It’s quite unusual for an intellectual property case to escalate into criminal proceedings,” noted the businessman’s lawyer, María Muiño González, told El Pais. The defense team invested three years in closely examining the brand and firmly asserted that the accused never had any intention of making the vehicle resemble a genuine Ferrari. “The emblems were crude, and you could clearly see that they were basic stickers,” she said. “Furthermore, there were no plans to sell it; he had it in his possession for only 12 days before it was seized.”

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Interesting. Both versions seem to have structural/grammatical errors in different places, and both feel machine-generated. Curiously, the different wording of each version also affects what's supposed to be direct quotes, which makes me irrationally angry for some reason. I think because once you allow yourself to paraphrase quotations that you'll have readers believe are verbatim, you may as well make them all up.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Rapid growth of ‘news’ sites using AI tools like ChatGPT is driving the spread of misinformation https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/02/rapid-growth-of-news-sites-using-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-is-driving-the-spread-of-misinforma https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/02/rapid-growth-of-new...
  - akhosravian 3y ago
    El Pais is a well knownand reasonably reputable Spanish newspaper; at a tier equivalent to the New York Times or Wall Street journal in the US. It is unlikely they are producing AI fabrications of this sort.

everyone 3y ago

[flagged]

avalys 3y ago
Most of the human population could be described as a "pointless CO2 emitter".
- hartator 3y ago
  We also all breathe; so we emit CO2 at each exhale.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    That was GP's point.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      So... not pointless? Sorry I get confused. :)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ipaddr 3y ago
Plant here. While you may find CO2 pointless we view air the same way. Keep sending us your valuable CO2 and we'll keep sending you pointless air
- aio2 3y ago
  thank you plant, very cool
saiya-jin 3y ago

mrandish 3y ago

I'm not clear on what legal grounds Ferrari could even make a claim here. The owner of the custom made look-alike car didn't create the car and never tried to sell the car. If Ferrari could prove that the car was substantially similar enough to infringe on their trademarked design AND likely to cause confusion, they might be able to impound the car and have it destroyed, similar to fake Rolex watches or Mickey Mouse t-shirts. But collecting punitive damages or prison time seems crazy. Maybe Spanish law is weirdly different but most western nations generally conform to WTO standards around IP. I suspect we're not getting the whole story here.

jjeaff 3y ago
I have never heard of any company being able to impound fake products from the end consumers either. It's possible they have never tried, but normally they are only seizing product en masse from people selling it.
- CaptainZapp 3y ago
  > I have never heard of any company being able to impound fake products from the end consumers either. Try importing a fake Gucci bag that you bought cheaply at Patbong Road in Bangkok to Italy. It won't only be impounded you'll also be hit with a fine in the 1000s of Euro. Same in France. Other countries may not be that excessive but you can be sure that your fake Rolex is toast when they catch it at customs. Sure, it's not the companies impounding the fakes but customs on their behalf.

technothrasher 3y ago

Ferrari is a particularly litigious company. One of my good friends who is an independent Ferrari mechanic got a C&D from them for having the image of a Ferrari dealer sign show up when you searched him on Facebook. He didn't even post it. It was a local driver's group who tagged him in the post for an event that was sponsored by said dealer. He briefly tried to engage with their lawyers and explain it really had nothing to do with him, but was basically told they would bankrupt him unless he complied with their wishes to take down the Facebook post that wasn't his. They have harassed him in the past for advertising that he fixes Ferraris, even though it has been settled law for decades that this is legal.

SpaceL10n 3y ago
I can't imagine they're making their money on unit sales, and Ferrari merchandise isn't exactly flying off the shelves... so where else do they make money?
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Their 2022 net income is 1 billion on 5 billion revenue, with that i think your imagination is just wrong. Ferrari is public and not a part of a larger car company.
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]
- Pat_Murph 3y ago
  In Q2 of 2023. Just the commercial and brand revenue were 147 million up 18% from previous year. Seems like the Ferrari merch is actually flying off the shelves. Their finanacials are easily accessible for everyone to see. If you had looked them up before commenting. You wouldn't have been wrong on every single thing you sayed. https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/corporate/articles/ferrari-upgrades-2023-guidance-on-exceptional-q2-2023-results-and-business-outlook https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/corporate/articles/ferrari-upg...

simne 3y ago

I've hear very similar case approx decade ago, when one small business made extremely ugly cheap doll, which from long distance remembers Russian Cheburashka. And judge decided, it is bad joke on intellectual property, and forbid its sells in country and pay moral penalty. What I learn from that case, it is sure important for me, which side I support, but it is extremely bad idea, to try impose my point of view to judge.