The trustees have always envisaged the drawings being used to help in re-manufacture of un-obtainable parts, but, as Peugeot retain legal title to the engineering drawings and fiches, the Trustees had to negociate a licensing agreement with the company's solicitors to enable this to happen. Outline agreement was obtained several years ago by ARCC, before the Archive Centre Trust came into being, but it took until April 2006 to finalise the Licensing Agreement and get it signed by both sides. The outcome gives us absolute freedom to exploit the archives as we wish to further the objectives of the Trust.
This means that the Trust is now free to authorise clubs and others, including commercial parts suppliers, to use copies of the drawings or microfiche and the informaiton they contain about original specifications, production tolerances, etc. in the re-manufacutre of parts no longer available. This is a great step forward in keeping all our Rootes Group vehicles on the road for the forseeable future, which was one of our principal objectives in rescuing the archives in the first place.
We had anticipated that Peugeot would impose additional conditions on what is called "commercial exploitation" of the drawings, but in the final stages of negociations they decided that the Trust's status as a registered charity is sufficient guarantee that we will not be making commercial profit from the archives, and on this basis were happy to waive their right to payment from the Trust and agreed that any income we generate from this source should be entirely devoted to furthering the aims of the Trust.
The Trustees are very grateful to the authorities at Peugeot for their constructive and sympathetic approach to all this - we and they found ourselves in a situation without legal precedent in the classic car world, and we acknowledge our thanks to the company for taking on board so fully the interests of those dedicated to preserving this part of our national heritage.
Now the agreement is in place, a number of ideas are being explored to exploit the drawings in this way. Any user of the drawings has to sign a simple "conditions of use" agreement with the Trust and pay a fee (which will be set of reflect the size of drawings as well as the nature of the user - clubs who want copies for use in exhibitions, for example, will pay a nominal fee but commercial users will pay appropriate rates). The Trust's policy in this area is that we will not ourselves get involved in re-manufacture, which will be left to the Rootes clubs and supplier companies in the trade. Clubs can therefore continue to set up contracts or orders for re-manufacture just as they do at present; the supplier will need to deal direct with thte Trust over the fee and signing the conditions of use agreeement.
We are gradually documenting the full list of drawings and other archive material held in the Trust, this will take quite some time. We are also gaining the ability to make copies of individual items as required. This is a new venture, but we have received a number of enquiries and will respond on a case-by-case basis.
Pricing Policy:
We have sold several items under an indicative pricing policy as below. This is aimed at professionals and prices will depend on the end purpose, e.g. publication, re-manufacture, etc. Other items for sale will be advertised in the on-line shop.
Anyone wishing to have more information about this at present should contact Matt Ollman by e-Mail: matthewollman@rootesarchivecentre.org.uk (e-mail), Phone or Post:
Matthew Ollman, 12 Medcroft Road, Tackley, Kidlington, Oxon OX5 3AH Tel: 01869 331552