Another time on ebay, somebody sell item recasted from our favorites manufacturers:
Nuts Planets
Andrea
Evolution
And many others like this one :

SK miniatures if my memory is good !
For the owners of the brands the seller have also a ebay shop.
Do not forget ebay protecting program against piracy Vero
Name :
foxbat25
shop :cooganexpress16

Same guy who is selling the Minuteman and has been for some time.

I was looking at a well know Russian site yesterday and their 75mm range, about 8 figures consists totally of Pegaso recasts in white metal-I'm surprised Pegaso haven't stopped this one!

A long time ago i worked on piracy, and i heard about Pegaso Piracy recast, so i contacted the brand.
Law is not the same in each countries forming EC. The law in France is strong but need that the owner request custom services.
Pegaso didn't wanted to did it, so no possibilities to counter piracy.
On ebay, there's a program against piracy :
Vero
But as a lot of thing made by Ebay, this program doesn't match with law, so this program is worst than nothing !!!!!

Something to consider about this particular question--why the copyright holder doesn't do something--is that he must decide whether the cost of legal pursuit is worth it. If it's going to cost him more than the lost revenue, that may weigh relatively heavily in his calculations.

I have a similar example--I know an eBay seller who sells castings, including solid copies of old Britains hollowcasts, but particularly, Imrie-Risley figures. I sent the links to a couple of his auctions to Saratoga Soldier, but they decided not to do anything about it. I had done my due diligence, inasmuch as I had any standing to do anything. I can't force the copyright holder to take action. I can only decide not to buy those figures myself.

Oh, and the Britains were copyright violations, too. Though the hollowcast toy soldier line is long out of production, William Britain is not, and they license a few vendors to provide replacement parts. So this guy is ripping off Britains as well as I/R.

Prost!
Brad

I know well the problem, i helped some French companies , it's part of my job as Custom Officer, little than drugs, but i know well the subject !
And no way if there's no ibternational agreements!

Does anyone know if Andrea bought the licenses for many of the figures they do like the Spiderman(Arachnid) or Indiana Jones, etc figures?

Not the same problem, and i'm not sure that Marvel or Lucas loose a lot of money with Andrea figure !

I'd say it's a striking similarity between what recasters do and what say Andrea does by calling Spider Man the Arachnid. I'm sure if Andrea had a licensing agreement with Marvel they'd be calling their kit Spiderman. And at the end of the day it's the principle of the matter. It's about someone's intellectual or artistic property being replicated or used without some form of compensation/legal acknowledgement to the author/artist.
My law firm represents some professional American sports leagues in their constant battle with websites(originating in Red China) that sell every manner of professional quality player/team jerseys for a fraction of what the league charges in stores or on their website. It's an epidemic. But like everyone says manufacturers and sculptors go out of business and we the consumers miss out on their work. It's a shame.

Many of the genuine sports league clothing (football shirts in UK) ironically are also manufactured in Asia.
The difference between those and figures is that the shirts, are cheap to make but sold for high prices as the sports teams get greedy.
Military figures are usually priced in the hope that production costs break even.
As posted before, here is a good case of the difference between design right legislation for movie props and art, 2 different copyright laws
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasfilm_Ltd_v_Ainsworth

To add to what Graham said:
You already have an example in miniatures of what happens when done the right way. As soon as I seen Knight models coming out with licensed figures, I thought to myself, well how long is this going to last? Knowing figure sales and just imagining what Lucas and Marvel would cost I knew they wouldn't be in business for long. Then they did the worst possible thing, tried to cut production costs by farming out. Terrible casting, missing parts, making a good idea turn bad.
Now they are only doing the small stuff and seem to have a better handle on things. There are more team jerseys of one player visible at one sporting event than the sale of the life of one figure.

Bob

Just as an update to this and as a warning to other recasters. There has been a lot of background work involved in getting to this stage and we have managed to get this person off Ebay for the time being and preventing him from selling further recast goods. We started proceedings in mid-September after being alerted of the full identity by another manufacturer. This is regarding Hungarian Ebay recaster "foxbat.25" with the shop "cooganexpress16". His full name is Attila Kiss. We followed up with Ebay to ensure that the counterfeit items were removed from his shop. Ebay removed a few but it was only after we bought a counterfeit kit as evidence and we advised him that he had been reported to the Hungarian authorities that he actually removed all items from his Ebay shop. We contacted the Hungarian Police, Hungarian Tax Office and the Hungarian International Trade office. We received replies from all of these Hungarian national authorities and they have been conducting investigations since then on this person. Today we received this latest update from the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office as follows:

"Your letter concerning illegal operations of a Hungarian citizen was forwarded to the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO). With reference to your complaint, allow me to provide you the following information.

Several enforcement procedures are available under the Hungarian law so as to permit effective action against any act of infringement of IP rights, such as:

- civil,

- criminal,

- customs procedures.

According to the IP legislation any person who unlawfully exploits/uses an IP right commits infringement. The right holder may, according to the circumstances of the case, have recourse to the following civil remedies:

- the fact of infringement be declared by the court;

- injunction;

- demanding that the infringer give information on the identity of persons involved in the production and distribution of the infringing goods;

- demanding satisfaction from the infringer by way of a declaration or by other appropriate means (made public if necessary);

- requiring surrender of the enrichment obtained by the infringement;

- seizure, transfer, definitive removal from the channels of commerce, destruction;

- damages under the rules of civil liability.

The Budapest-Capital Regional Court has exclusive competence in litigation concerning the infringement.

In case of IPR infringement criminal sanctions may also be applied against the infringers.

Act C of 2012 on Criminal Code contains the statutory definition of offences when criminal enforcement may be claimed:

- infringement of copyright and certain related rights

- infringement of industrial property rights.

In these cases the National Tax and Customs Administration (NTCA) shall conduct the investigation. The prosecution may be initiated before this authority (http://en.nav.gov.hu/). If you would like to take action against the person infringing your IP rights, please contact the NTCA.

If you need, you may find useful information concerning professional representation in Hungary on the website of the HIPO (http://www.sztnh.gov.hu/en/professional-representatives).

I hope you will find this information helpful. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me."

We have taken it this far but now the IP owners/manufacturers can follow up further by taking one or more of the steps listed above.

For recasters based in the UK, we will follow up with Trading Standards and fines are substantial. It may take some time but we will get results.

Thank you for your time. Should anyone have questions or any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
Matt and Celine

Well done Matt and Celine.....congratulations on pushing to preserve your rights and not giving in to these scum

Ron

Totally agree, this has been a real crusade that has produced results.

Alan