legal issue recreating part for sale

beerorkid

New member
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
763
Reaction score
6
Location
Lincoln, Nebraska
I am about to order my second set of gears for Rudy's jaw on funhouse. It really sucks that the plastic gears can shred so easily.

I am good friends with a manufacturing company that could reproduce these with much better materials.

Would I run into legal problems if I tried to sell these?
 
I think they were made of plastic in order to be a "mechanical fuse" so to speak. In case you got your finger caught in Rudy's mouth you would not get hurt bad.

The gears could be made of either brass or formica/fibre instead.

It would be a good idea to search to see if Williams filed any patents on Rudy's head assembly. If so, I'd look to see if they have expired.
 
People make upgraded and better replacement parts for stuff all the time. No issues there. WMS could have a patent on the general Rudy assembly (moving head that eats a pinball) and a trademark on Rudy, but not a gear. You will run into issues if you use William/Bally logos and images if you advertise the part.
 
Last edited:
You need to email pinbits and ask Martin if his Rudy gears are up for sale yet. This recreation using harder material has already been done.
 
looks like a printer gear...lol. i'm going to reproduce gears for another high failure pinball part in the next month. you can't get in trouble for producing a gear.
 
I am glad pinbits is working on a better gear. I sent a message, but have not heard back. Just really bummed that new and very expensive gears shredded on the freak instant that the ball got thrown by Rudy tossing the ball up with his lip. It is not my machine and I am days away from giving it back to them and the gears fried and I wanted to see if I could provide something better for them and the others who own FH and RS. Glad someone else is working on it actually.

The local manufacturing place a block from my house is full of a bunch of my friends. I have had a few things made and it is insane what they can do. I had a few ideas for parts and passed the info to them so they could make money off of them and was told that it would just be easier for me to have the parts made by them and sell them myself.

They even have robots that serve beer :)

 
So what happens when the ball gets stuck and you have a stronger gear in there?

Does it burn up something else instead?
 
I think they were made of plastic in order to be a "mechanical fuse" so to speak. In case you got your finger caught in Rudy's mouth you would not get hurt bad.

The gears could be made of either brass or formica/fibre instead.

It would be a good idea to search to see if Williams filed any patents on Rudy's head assembly. If so, I'd look to see if they have expired.

My propcycle had a similar feature, the connection between the motor and the squirrel cage fan was a toothed piece of rubber! I had my father fabricate a replacement from aluminum. I shouldn't have that problem again!

Sent from my android phone
 
Back
Top Bottom