(The following article by Glenn Bohn was posted on the Vancouver Sun website on February 14.)
WEST VANCOUVER — A local photographer with a passion for old trains is being sued by Union Pacific Railway, the largest railway corporation in North America, over a calendar featuring its trains.
Union Pacific — whose red, white and blue logo has red and white stripes just like the U.S. flag — alleges Nils Huxtable violated the company’s exclusive right to use its Union Pacific trademark and design by producing and selling a “Union Pacific” calendar.
A website soliciting money for Huxtable’s legal defence says “the artistic rights of railroad photographers are under attack.”
Union Pacific, which built part of the first trans-continental railway across the U.S. and holds one of the oldest corporate trademarks in the U.S., disagrees.
Brenda Mainwaring, the company’s director of corporate relations, says Union Pacific isn’t disputing the right of people to take photographs of its trains but will take measures to protect its trademark, logo and its name.
Mainwaring said the company has authorized more than 100 companies to use its trademark for various products, including calendars, but Huxtable made use of the company name without its permission.
“It’s important for any company to protect their trademarks,” Mainwaring said in an interview Monday from the company’s headquarters in Nebraska.
“A great deal of the value of a company is in its name and reputation. Therefore, it has to protect the way its name and reputation is portrayed.”
Nils Huxtable couldn’t be reached for comment about the lawsuit, which could go to trial this June.
His mother, who said her son is in Cuba at a train festival, said the lawsuit is “completely stupid.”
“He’s been involved in these calendars for the last eight years and nothing ever came about that would warrant something like this,” said Renate Huxtable, who does some work for her son’s business but is not named in the lawsuit.
“I get a little under the weather when I talk about it, because it’s so unjust. This started last April and it’s just been building up and up, giving us both a lot of stress.”
Nils Huxtable refers to his lifelong love for photographing steam-powered and diesel trains in the legal document that outlines his defence.
The statement of facts calls Huxtable “one of the world’s most highly renowned railroad photographers.” It notes the 56-year-old man took his first railroad photograph in Great Britain, in 1961, when he was just 11. He shot his first photo of a Union Pacific train in 1964, in Wyoming.
By 1970, his photographs and articles about trains were being published in the international circulation magazines read by train worshippers. Huxtable’s photos appeared on postcards and posters, as well as in at least a dozen books. And, since 1994, he’s been producing and publishing an annual “Union Pacific calendar” described as a “Steamscenes Publication.”
Huxtable argued that his calendars are distinguishable from the calendars produced by Union Pacific, which depict modern trains. He contrasted those photos of new trains with his “classic images of historically significant Union Pacific trains, captured in beautiful settings, by the world’s finest railroad photographers, with historical notes and background information.”