In the video: "I'm not a business person"
Maybe spend a few minutes educating yourselves about copyright laws and trademarks before broadcasting worldwide or making parts. Believe it or not, there are actual rules for this kind of stuff. Save the online crying and whining - it helps nothing - and maybe take a few business classes. Just a thought.
Do you really expect people to know the difference between these two phrases:
"Servo Mount for TRX4M"
"Micro Servo Mount (compatible with TRX4M)"
I guarantee you could Google yourself ragged and never come to the conclusion that the former phase was something that constituted a violation worthy of legal response. So let's be real here, this is not someone going around saying he is Traxxas selling parts, it's a minor nuance that no one else would have thought of and goes without issue throughout the rest of the industry.
Maybe I missed some of the context, or content that appeared before the part of the stream that later got posted to YouTube.
The context is that they were selling parts that fit the TRX4M, Traxxas felt the wording around how they were listed in the URL and description constituted a trademark violation. Effectively they were sold as "xyz part for TRX4M" or "TRX4M xyz", instead of "Compatible with TRX4M". They felt this was confusing, probably figuring it impacted part sales when people searched for replacement parts and found the smaller companies instead of Traxxas.
Let's keep in mind also that Traxxas has been suing companies for using any form of "Max" in the title, including HBO. So it's worth remembering they are just trolls at this point. It's one thing to defend your brand, it's another to try and trademark a generic phrase in a completely unrelated industry.
Not a defense of Traxxas, but it is depressingly amusing to hear people so willing to boycott Traxxas as if they're some sort of evil empire-- but happily buy from any of the brands under the Horizon umbrella.
Last I checked, Horizon wasn't going after every small manufacturer selling parts with SCX24 in the title.
Except that it does. It negatively impacts the hobby when small brands are putting mods out there that improve and expand the hobby, then being threatened by larger brands selling products to non-hobbyists like Traxxas is. Hell, most crawlers started out as modified vehicles from mainline manufacturers many years ago, so the whole RC crawling thing was founded on these types of mods made by small brands and they continue to drive innovation and improvement way ahead of big brands.
It may not impact you directly, but it impacts the hobby in a negative way. Is this going to kill it? Probably not, but it sucks when people come up with something they want to sell to improve a product, but are too afraid of legal repercussions to do so, it holds the hobby back. There are obviously lines that shouldn't be crossed, but in this case, they overreached over a minor wording issue IMO. These are the types of things that keep innovative and interesting mods from coming to market from smaller brands.