I know there was a 200+ page thread on this and multiple commentary blogs etc on it.
I also know it was resolved but would someone like to sum it up from start to finish with the overall outcome and implications?
It dosent have to be very indepth, just a flavour leaving aside the legal nuances and ins and outs.

Chapterhouse made conversion bit compatible with 40k.
GW Got mad and sued Chapterhouse
Chapterhouse got some very good pro-bono IP lawyers
In court, GW proved to have no idea what it actually owned, and often made a fool of itself.
After several years a ruling was made that basically had a 75/25% split in Chapterhouse's favor over IP violations. Chapterhouse was allowed to use some trademarked terms, but had to pay GW $25k or so.
GW dragged it's heels on the appeals process.
GW then froze Chapterhouse's assets over the $25k, a value less than the total amount GW payed for printing all of it's documents in the case.
Chapterhouse settled with GW after the assets frozen thing to no bring the case to appeals.
Because it didn't go to appeals, not much really happened in the end, but GW got a black eye and might be a little less trigger happy with litigation.


I think I go that tright.

Pretty much.

Worth mentioning that the 25/75% split at the trial didn't include literally hundreds of claims GW made that didn't even make it that far.

If one took those into account, it's probably 90+% against GW.

 Ratius wrote:
I know there was a 200+ page thread on this and multiple commentary blogs etc on it.
I also know it was resolved but would someone like to sum it up from start to finish with the overall outcome and implications?
It dosent have to be very indepth, just a flavour leaving aside the legal nuances and ins and outs.

Oh man...

Yes, someone can do that. I am well equipped to do it (perhaps the best equipped), and I will be happy to do it. That said, it will take some time to provide a decent account of the litigation with sufficient brevity. I don't really have time to do it this weekend, and likely not for the bulk of next week. I can get something together by the 17th, if you are okay waiting a week.

Someone else, such as Czakk or Janthkin, might be able to put something together sooner.

Ah no rush or hassle Weeble, appreciate it. Riven kinda of summed it up (rather bluntly but thats ok).
I was more just seeing if I had the jist of things correct and if it actually did "end".
Also so surprised GW froze CH assets, I vaguely recall hearing they tried to go after his personal wealth? Sheeesh.

 Ratius wrote:
Ah no rush or hassle Weeble, appreciate it. Riven kinda of summed it up (rather bluntly but thats ok).
I was more just seeing if I had the jist of things correct and if it actually did "end".
Also so surprised GW froze CH assets, I vaguely recall hearing they tried to go after his personal wealth? Sheeesh.

Yeah. I vaguely recall weeble making the call that that move was probably a last ditch game of chicken GW played to get out of going to appeal.

weeble1000 wrote:
Yes, someone can do that. I am well equipped to do it (perhaps the best equipped), and I will be happy to do it.

Weeble, given your great contribution to that thread, as well as your sensible advice to others any time any legal issues get raised, it would be superb if you would write a brief like that. It would certainly help the community to have something to reference to when either fresh blood or poor memories ask about these events in a few years time.

Henry wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Yes, someone can do that. I am well equipped to do it (perhaps the best equipped), and I will be happy to do it.

Weeble, given your great contribution to that thread, as well as your sensible advice to others any time any legal issues get raised, it would be superb if you would write a brief like that. It would certainly help the community to have something to reference to when either fresh blood or poor memories ask about these events in a few years time.

Weeble, Czakk, Jankthin, and a few others were absolutely priceless in how well they helped decipher the legal complexities of the case and the various court filings. Over the last few years, I feel like I earned a couple of hours of credit towards an education on IP law by following the GW vs CHS thread thanks to those professionals.

I think weeble will do the best job of explaining it, although what's been said so far is pretty accurate. I'd just like to add that for me, one of the big 'events' in the case was chapterhouse getting the hardcore pro-bono representation.

GW has a history of using it's relative power/wealth to threaten lawsuits against a lot of people and up until chapterhouse they got away with it. Just like the chapterhouse case, they usually didn't have a leg to stand on but the people they targeted couldn't afford the legal process to defend themselves. This is essentially the first big time case where gw did their routine and got called on it. Its a pity that chapterhouse didn't go through with the appeal, but that's easier for me to say from my armchair i guess. The end results were still pretty damning against gw, both legally and ethically.

 Torga_DW wrote:
I think weeble will do the best job of explaining it, although what's been said so far is pretty accurate. I'd just like to add that for me, one of the big 'events' in the case was chapterhouse getting the hardcore pro-bono representation.

GW has a history of using it's relative power/wealth to threaten lawsuits against a lot of people and up until chapterhouse they got away with it. Just like the chapterhouse case, they usually didn't have a leg to stand on but the people they targeted couldn't afford the legal process to defend themselves. This is essentially the first big time case where gw did their routine and got called on it. Its a pity that chapterhouse didn't go through with the appeal, but that's easier for me to say from my armchair i guess. The end results were still pretty damning against gw, both legally and ethically.

Don't forget financially. Even the preamble said they spent too much on it and those preambles try to make everything look good.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Don't forget financially. Even the preamble said they spent too much on it and those preambles try to make everything look good.

True. The closest i can come to the case having a 'good' point in their favour was that at least chapterhouse were involved in the sphere of gw's business. That spots the space marine thing really rubbed me the wrong way. GW could still manage okay with the "pants on head crazy" label, but a lot of what they do is outright malicious. I can't find their legal page at the moment, but they used to have pages on their website where they basically copyrighted everything. Like if you buy their product and assemble, say a space marine, you can't post a picture of it online afterwards unless you'd first obtained their written consent. Crazy can be tolerated, malicious can't.

 Torga_DW wrote:
I can't find their legal page at the moment

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Intellectual-Property-Policy (linked to in their FAQ)

Thankfully they seem to have toned it down a bit, and most of the things that they don't have legal justification for are presented as requests rather than threats of lawsuits. The only things that stand out is their "don't use our trademarks" demand and their test for "is your model ripping off our IP", two things that the CHS case demonstrated had significantly less legal support than GW likes to think.

Ok Weeble, a synopsis when you are ready good sir, according to the masses
#salute

 Ratius wrote:
Ok Weeble, a synopsis when you are ready good sir, according to the masses
#salute

Will do.

I could do it sooner, but the prospect feels sort of mentally exhausting and I have a jury to strike on Monday. There's more reasons to put together a good end-to-end synopsis than answering your question, and I'd rather get it done right. I'll definitely get it posted by the 17th, maybe sooner.

17th or we file a dakka class action on you brutha.....

Huh. Thats what happened. I was confused about the thing for a while.

Here weeble, have a bunch of exalts for even considering this.

So what did each party get from the process, could someone please summarize?

Apparently CH is still selling the kits as 'GW compatible', so the court allowed that? What are the things that CH had to stop doing? GW got small amount of money, plus a lot of negative reputation?

 prowla wrote:
So what did each party get from the process, could someone please summarize?

Apparently CH is still selling the kits as 'GW compatible', so the court allowed that? What are the things that CH had to stop doing? GW got small amount of money, plus a lot of negative reputation?

Among other things, GW learned what the rest of the world beyond the moat and wall already knew; that people can make after-market parts for your products, and they can mention your product (with appropriate mention of trade marks and such) while selling their own items.

 prowla wrote:
So what did each party get from the process, could someone please summarize?

Apparently CH is still selling the kits as 'GW compatible', so the court allowed that? What are the things that CH had to stop doing? GW got small amount of money, plus a lot of negative reputation?

The short answer about guidance for others is that the trial court made some scary and concerning rulings that should make folks in this industry nervous in general, regardless of anything to do with Games Workshop. I will go into some of those in my summary.

Apart from that, all you really have in the GW v CHS trial result is what the jury decided, and the only glimpse you have into that is a verdict form that gives precious little detail.

That said, the GW v CHS jury tended to be pretty consistent. One point of consistency in the jury's verdict (which was upheld by the trial Judge), was that almost all uses of an alleged GW mark within the context of a qualifying phrase, e.g. 'for use with' 'works well with' 'compatible with', was found to be fair use. This includes the tabs on the CHS website which makes use of marks in this manner, e.g. "Eldar compatible bits," and the CHS slogan, "Specializing in custom bits and sculpts for Warhammer 40,000 and Fantasy."

That's a pretty clear result that is, in my view, perfectly consistent with the law. A caveat here is that this does not make strong precedent within the Seventh Circuit itself, much less outside of it. But that does't matter too much as it is consistent with the way the law should be appropriately applied. A second caveat is that, if I recall correctly, these findings of fact are also consistent with the trial testimony of Andy Jones, which makes trouble for GW should the company attempt to assert its makers against any similar use in the future.

One of the things that was mentioned in the trial was that GW claimed they owned 100% of everything they make because everything is 100% original and from their minds only.

So Space Marines was their creation, Tyranids was their creation, Necrons was their creation. They had no outside influence when making them.

I would have loved to see the judges face if it was brought up that Necrons don't Scream Terminators and Tyranids don't scream Aliens.

But yeah GW claimed those are original ideas and can't be copied.

 RivenSkull wrote:
Chapterhouse made conversion bit compatible with 40k.

Well, there's a helluva lot more to this piece than that.

 cincydooley wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Chapterhouse made conversion bit compatible with 40k.

Well, there's a helluva lot more to this piece than that.

I don't think the Doom of Malantai seer ever showed up in the case did it? I don't remember it anyway.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Chapterhouse made conversion bit compatible with 40k.

Well, there's a helluva lot more to this piece than that.

I don't think the Doom of Malantai seer ever showed up in the case did it? I don't remember it anyway.

I think to say it was "because they made conversion bits" is a gross oversimplification.

CHS did and continues to do exactly what it has always claimed "Specializing in custom bits and sculpts for Warhammer 40,000 and Fantasy."

Part of the issue with this case is that it is okay to tell customers the truth about your products, whether or not someone likes that truth. In fact, in the US it is almost always okay to make a true statement.

It's one of those pesky things about freedom.

weeble1000 wrote:
That said, the GW v CHS jury tended to be pretty consistent. One point of consistency in the jury's verdict (which was upheld by the trial Judge), was that almost all uses of an alleged GW mark within the context of a qualifying phrase, e.g. 'for use with' 'works well with' 'compatible with', was found to be fair use. This includes the tabs on the CHS website which makes use of marks in this manner, e.g. "Eldar compatible bits," and the CHS slogan, "Specializing in custom bits and sculpts for Warhammer 40,000 and Fantasy."

That is one of the most important parts. Above all else, when you Google "Space Marine Shoulderpads," for example, GW wants every single result to point to www.games-workshop.com. And GW lost that.

Yes, but if we're talking about quantites and size of egg, CHS got hit by a couple of quayle eggs, while GW had entire squadrons of great eagles from LoTR bombarding them for weeks..

GW used a sledgehammer to crack a nut and mostly missed. Technically they won because they got some rulings in their favour and they prevented the appeal. But it was a very pyrrhic victory. They did far more damage to themselves than CHS and spent far more money than they could possibly have lost to CHS selling bits, if indeed CHS has a negative impact on GW sales at all.

 cincydooley wrote:

Spoiler:

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Chapterhouse made conversion bit compatible with 40k.

Well, there's a helluva lot more to this piece than that.

I don't think the Doom of Malantai seer ever showed up in the case did it? I don't remember it anyway.

I think to say it was "because they made conversion bits" is a gross oversimplification.

In what way?

I think the above posts have given a fairly good summary overall, though I believe that as pointed out by the relative amounts of money involved I dont think GW ever intended this to be about the money CHS cost them.

Instead they were hoping to make an example of CHS to make sure other bits makers didn't push to far onto GW's perceived market territory. The problems for GW came about when:

1) CHS decided to resist
2) CHS got highly competent pro-bono support
3) GW didn't manage to settle things before it went to court

The end result was GW being less secure in its IP ownership than anybody, especially them, thought. This has forced them to change up some of their policies and work on claiming what they thought was their own IP before others do. It also means they have had to discard a number of units and characters with no direct model representation as they were unable to protect them.

I disagree with your choice of wording on point number 3. GW wanted this to go to court. The only way to settle this out of court that would be acceptable to GW is Chapterhouse essentially killing itself and handing over all of its assets...which is unreasonable and stupid. That was the only option.

GW made this personal and went to great lengths to make sure this went to court. They didn't expect it to bite them in the ass as hard as it did, though.

Not quite. I doubt GW ever expected it to go to court, they were just hoping the threat of court would make CHS fold.

At the end of the day, GW spend "indecent" amounts of money (according to the Chairmans annual report), and CHS is still running after the settlement. GW failed spectacularly to do what it set out to (shut down CHS), and wasted a lot of time and money in the process.

The biggest fall-out from the whole thing is GW's new approach to sales; nothing in rules that doesn't already have a model.

Oh, yeah, you're right. Chapterhouse was supposed to get scared and immediately give in to GW's demands. But when that didn't happen then they were more than happy to drag it to court.

I think they were surprised they actually had to do court, as they didn't seem in any way ready for it. I reckon they were either expecting CHS to fail to turn up, or to cave in in the foyer 5 minutes before it started. They seemed almost resentful of the fact it was defended at all.

Herzlos wrote:
I think they were surprised they actually had to do court, as they didn't seem in any way ready for it. I reckon they were either expecting CHS to fail to turn up, or to cave in in the foyer 5 minutes before it started. They seemed almost resentful of the fact it was defended at all.

I got the distinct impression that even a week before the first court date GW where still expecting the 'I'm sorry, I fold' phone call.


From the get go though they really wanted people to see them as the 800 pound gorilla that would bring it's IP hammer down on anyone touching their work. They wanted people scared and expected to make an example of CH.

When this actually went to court though I think their priorities shifted. They had already lost some things by the time the trial started and then (I may be getting the timeline wring but I think this is the correct order of events) we started seeing the mentality of 'Warhammer 40k is our creation, and therefore our strongly protected IP. X chapter shoulderpads come from Warhammer 40k, our protected IP, therefore you're infringing our IP by making them'. There was this weird attitude you could see that seemed like they wanted everything wrapped in a big ball that would then become a single IP instead of thousands of individual ones. They wanted to set a precedent that even the most unorigonal thing in 40k, like skulls or roman numerals, are protectable because they are part of a larger whole.


Instead of folding CH got very good pro bono council BECAUSE GW's claims where so extreme. Powerful law firms didn't want those kind of precedents set for their paying clients so they flocked to CH and showed the world that GW is actually a 60 pound monkey playing with it's own excrement in the corner.

Ultimately I ignore the numbers of claims won or damages awarded when looking at who 'won'.
GW's goal was to kill CH and scare other bits makers away.
CH wanted to survive.
In the end Ch is still around and there are now clear guidelines for what can and can't be done for all those other bits makers to follow now, strengthening them.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
GW used a sledgehammer to crack a nut and mostly missed.

That brought an image of GW sat with the nut on its lap. Missing hurts.

weeble1000 wrote:

The short answer about guidance for others is that the trial court made some scary and concerning rulings that should make folks in this industry nervous in general, regardless of anything to do with Games Workshop. I will go into some of those in my summary.

Some of the bad ones - from my recollection was granting trademark status on GW's say-so for items which were only words mentioned deep in one of their published books, and not actual marks used in trade.

Also in their claim chart they never really specified what was a copyright claim and what was a trademark claim, trying to conflate the issues into 'IP'

The GW case was a big bag of clown shoes.

You only have to read through some of the pre-trial discovery and testimony from various witnesses to see that GW did not have the slightest clue what they were doing.

I personally believe they only won on the points they did because the jury couldn't believe that so much mud could be thrown at the wall without some of it sticking.

It was a great pity the appeal did not get to court because GW probably would have lost on a lot of the things they won at trial.

Just my opinions, of course...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The GW case was a big bag of clown shoes.

You only have to read through some of the pre-trial discovery and testimony from various witnesses to see that GW did not have the slightest clue what they were doing.

I personally believe they only won on the points they did because the jury couldn't believe that so much mud could be thrown at the wall without some of it sticking.

It was a great pity the appeal did not get to court because GW probably would have lost on a lot of the things they won at trial.

Just my opinions, of course...

Personally I think it was funnier that they expected that they had trademarks on things just because they said they did, without actually having one filed.

And let's not forget Kirby's dig at the US court system in the preamble, as though that was the only reason they didn't win 100%, because those darn colonists want to stick it to Britain once again.

WayneTheGame wrote:

Personally I think it was funnier that they expected that they had trademarks on things just because they said they did, without actually having one filed.

This is not actually that crazy. You don't have to file a trademark in order to have a trademark. You do, however, have to use a mark in order to have one, and your mark has to pretty uniquely identify the source of a particular good or service.

GW claimed marks based on very spurious uses and very spurious evidence of use. For example, GW claimed the word mark "jet pack" based on its use in the middle of the fluff description of assault marines on the back of an Assault Squad box.

Just because my box of Bic pens says "shows visible ink supply" within the product description on the box does't mean that "ink supply" is a Bic trademark. That's crazy.

Also didn't it have to do with CH making models that GW just wasn't making?

Which could be a reason we are seeing a lot of named but no model for them units dissapearing?

 Vash108 wrote:
Also didn't it have to do with CH making models that GW just wasn't making?

Which could be a reason we are seeing a lot of named but no model for them units dissapearing?

Yea, absolutely. This is one clear result of the GW v CHS litigation.

But GW is shooting themselves in the foot here.

GW was concerned about smaller, more nimble companies putting out products before it was able to. Only despite the fact that Alan Merrett lied his off on the stand saying that every single thing in every army book/codex is a product GW intends to make and sell, we all know that GW had holes in its product line it was unwilling to actually fill.

The customers looking to fill these holes tended to be dedicated customers otherwise laden with GW products. Who gets ornery about not having an official Eldar Farseer on a Jetbike? Certainly not Little Timmy. A lot of those holes were too small for GW to really care about, but kept the game more diverse. So in that instance GW is getting a benefit from the 3rd party company.

Even if the company is producing a whole model, the product is still an 'accessory' at heart, because it is being used as an accessory by GW's target customers; i.e. people playing the game and buying lots of GW products. The model accessorizes the army and the game even if it doesn't accessorize a particular model. Armies and games are absolutely GW 'products'.

Now, GW was also concerned about smaller, more nimble customers putting out miniatures for units GW actually planned to release miniatures for at some point, e.g. Tyranid Tervigon. However, GW still gets a benefit from third party companies here. First and foremost, these companies do not have a shadow of GW's market penetration. We are talking about unit sales in the low thousands. If that was eating up the entirety of GW's potential market, that would certainly be a problem, but it wasn't. GW was selling shedloads of Tervigon/Tyrannofex box sets even after CHS sold a thousand Tervigon Conversion Kits. Secondly, if GW actually paid attention to the sales of these smaller companies, it would have a good idea about how well it could expect certain products to sell once they were released. Thirdly, these types of products help to keep up interest in and demand for a product during the down time before GW releases its version.

Again, recognize what is positive and do a cost/benefit analysis. GW's legal antics in the CHS case haven't chilled the third party market. Look at the companies releasing how many different variations of ogres right now. How much do you lose by trying to swat flies with a hammer? How much does it hurt when you miss?

 Vash108 wrote:
Also didn't it have to do with CH making models that GW just wasn't making?

Which could be a reason we are seeing a lot of named but no model for them units dissapearing?

The reason why we are seeing units with no models disappearing is because GW have NO idea why they lost the claims that they did.
GW is simply cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Steelmage99 wrote:

 Vash108 wrote:
Also didn't it have to do with CH making models that GW just wasn't making?

Which could be a reason we are seeing a lot of named but no model for them units dissapearing?

The reason why we are seeing units with no models disappearing is because GW have NO idea why they lost the claims that they did.
GW is simply cutting off the nose to spite the face.

I don't think that's true. I think GW would be doing the same thing even if it had won all of the claims in the case.

And GW knows why it lost just as CHS knows why it lost on some things and why it won on others. It isn't a mystery. GW may think it shouldn't have lost, but it certainly knows why.

GW is just lucky that Moskin's method of sling BS, crying wolf, and try not to get caught in a lie didn't blow up in its face. If this case had gone on appeal, it could very easily have blown up in GW's face.

At the end of the day, GW was blessed in getting Judge Kennelly. Most of GW's victories come down to bad rulings by the court. Some of them come down to bad CHS documents. Very few of GW's victories come from good advocacy, and even fewer come from being in the right.

You need to finish striking the jury and publish your summary. Out of interest, does the jury ever complain when you strike them?

Weeble I agree with your model assessment, Although CH's models naming and explanation were a little too obvious. Lots of companies still make figures that serve that function. Although they have to camouflage it somewhat.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Weeble I agree with your model assessment, Although CH's models naming and explanation were a little too obvious. Lots of companies still make figures that serve that function. Although they have to camouflage it somewhat.

That is sort of the crux of the case though - it needs to be, is allowed to be and should be obvious what it is for.

When I go into a store to buy a cover for my tablet - I don't want to have to sort out whether or not it will fit the particular brand and model that I have by deciphering their description. I want to look at the side of the box, find my tablet's model on the list of compatible devices and then go home.

People often forget that the very first purpose of trademarks and trademark law is not to protect the business or their brand, but to protect the consumer. It allows them to quickly identify products and product compatibility. The secondary purpose is to protect the brand, but that falls second behind the consumer (which is why consumers get to choose what has become a generic term - no matter what the company might think about the issue...).

I wonder how much extra site traffic CH got out of this, and even potentially additional customers from all the exposure GW gave them.

 Torga_DW wrote:
You need to finish striking the jury and publish your summary. Out of interest, does the jury ever complain when you strike them?

It depends on the court and the judge, but generally speaking, jurors do not know who struck them or why. They are thanked for their service by the trial judge and dismissed. Most peremptory challenges are made outside the presence of the jury.

weeble1000 wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
You need to finish striking the jury and publish your summary. Out of interest, does the jury ever complain when you strike them?

It depends on the court and the judge, but generally speaking, jurors do not know who struck them or why. They are thanked for their service by the trial judge and dismissed.

Anyone else got the mental image of a room of blindfolded civies being slapped by someone with the back of a leather glove and then told thank you?

 Henry wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
You need to finish striking the jury and publish your summary. Out of interest, does the jury ever complain when you strike them?

It depends on the court and the judge, but generally speaking, jurors do not know who struck them or why. They are thanked for their service by the trial judge and dismissed.

Anyone else got the mental image of a room of blindfolded civies being slapped by someone with the back of a leather glove and then told thank you?

Ah, yes, 'striking' a jury. Sometimes there's a juror you'd really like to strike. I remember once a Judge asked the jury how deliberations were going, and the foreperson's response was that all the jury needed to render a verdict was a gun and one bullet.

 AduroT wrote:
I wonder how much extra site traffic CH got out of this, and even potentially additional customers from all the exposure GW gave them.

I'm feeling like supporting them just for the bravery and stubbornness

Heads up y'all. I'm going to take a few more days on the summary.

I decided to do an extensive review of the publicly available documents, e.g. motion practice, hearing transcripts, etc. I have also been taking a hard look at the verdict form and the trial transcripts.

It is sort of like doing a summary of your relationship with an ex girlfriend by going back through all of your emails, status updates, and whatnot. In other words, morbidly interesting, but not terribly easy.

So I'm going to take a few more days to finish with the docs.

Weeble, you're awesome.

weeble1000 wrote:
Heads up y'all. I'm going to take a few more days on the summary.

I decided to do an extensive review of the publicly available documents, e.g. motion practice, hearing transcripts, etc. I have also been taking a hard look at the verdict form and the trial transcripts.

It is sort of like doing a summary of your relationship with an ex girlfriend by going back through all of your emails, status updates, and whatnot. In other words, morbidly interesting, but not terribly easy.

So I'm going to take a few more days to finish with the docs.

You can take however many days you need.
Thank you for taking your time to do this.

 Stormwall wrote:
Weeble, you're awesome.

Aye. Take as long as you want with that, it sounds like it will be an amazing resource to have and a very interesting read.

Definitely interested to read it, since I know on certain other sites if you bring it up you tend to find a lot of people siding with GW and thinking that Chapterhouse were thieves and the owner should have been bankrupted for being a thief trying to profit off of GW''s hard work. There was a nice bit of vehemence when CHS' assets were frozen by people saying good on GW for putting an end to this imitator.

Has GW divulged how much they've spent on legal fees yet?

 SilverDevilfish wrote:
Has GW divulged how much they've spent on legal fees yet?

Not explicitly, no. Not that I have seen. It is likely buried somewhere in the financial statements. I'm not terribly educated in reading and interpreting those things, so I have sort of been waiting to see if someone finds something about it. I doubt we'll ever know for sure unless GW sues Foley and Lardner for malpractice or something and there's public documents that disclose the fees.

Just to note: there are no such US district court filings, and I searched in New York state courts and Cook County Illinois and did not find anything. Although interestingly, I did find a contract dispute case titled Games Workshop AME v Marc Heller filed in April, 2014. It seems that Marc Heller owns a game store in the Chicago area. Surprising what you find if you go looking. If only all state courts had e-filing and there was a way to comprehensively search all of them at once.

We have info on what costs GW claimed for the trial, and it is easy to ball-park the hourly rates of Mr. Moskin and Mr. Keener. We know the hourly rate of GW's paid expert (~$700/hour if I recall). It is also possible to ball-park the hours spent on legal research, briefs, court appearances, witness prep, depositions, meet and confer, trial, etc. However, that wouldn't really get you to a reliable guess about what GW spent on the litigation. GW might have had a flat fee arrangement with F&L, there might have been a contingency arrangement, F&L could have given a performance-based discount on its fees, heck, GW might be disputing the bill right now.

There are a lot of unknown factors. That said, we do know that Tom Kirby considered the expenditures to be an "indecent" amount of investors' money. It is also more than a fair guess to say that the total expenditures would likely be somewhere in the seven figures, some on costs/expenses (printing, travel, hotels, meals, court fees, trial support, war room, monetary sanction, etc.) and a larger portion in fees.

By the time the suit went before the jury it was estimated GW spent $6 million. Just as much time, but many more man hours and paper work was generated between then and by the time a settlement was reached bringing the defense's estimate of GW's litigation cost up to $12 million. This is GW's profits for a year and why GWs assertion at the end of trial that the $25,000 was all it ever wanted was clearly insincere.

 aka_mythos wrote:
By the time the suit went before the jury it was estimated GW spent $6 million. Just as much time, but many more man hours and paper work was generated between then and by the time a settlement was reached bringing the defense's estimate of GW's litigation cost up to $12 million. This is GW's profits for a year and why GWs assertion at the end of trial that the $25,000 was all it ever wanted was clearly insincere.

I think that's way over the mark, actually. Probably seven figures, definitely not eight. I would be flabbergasted if GW spent 10 million on the litigation. I've worked on cases with a million dollar monthly burn rate, and the GW v CHS case wasn't in the same league.

After the verdict GW did...basically no work on the case. GW's post-judgement filings were crude hack jobs that literally had glaring copy/paste errors. The post-trial costs/fees could not have been a shadow of what the pre-trial costs/fees were. There was basically no motion practice, seemingly little in the way of meet and confers, clearly a few settlement hearings with accompanying document exchanges, but no depositions, little legal research, few court appearances, almost no travel, no experts. The entire appeal process would probably have only cost GW $250,000.00 or so, maybe less.

weeble1000 wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
By the time the suit went before the jury it was estimated GW spent $6 million. Just as much time, but many more man hours and paper work was generated between then and by the time a settlement was reached bringing the defense's estimate of GW's litigation cost up to $12 million. This is GW's profits for a year and why GWs assertion at the end of trial that the $25,000 was all it ever wanted was clearly insincere.

I think that's way over the mark, actually. Probably seven figures, definitely not eight. I would be flabbergasted if GW spent 10 million on the litigation. I've worked on cases with a million dollar monthly burn rate, and the GW v CHS case wasn't in the same league.

After the verdict GW did...basically no work on the case. GW's post-judgement filings were crude hack jobs that literally had glaring copy/paste errors. The post-trial costs/fees could not have been a shadow of what the pre-trial costs/fees were. There was basically no motion practice, seemingly little in the way of meet and confers, clearly a few settlement hearings with accompanying document exchanges, but no depositions, little legal research, few court appearances, almost no travel, no experts. The entire appeal process would probably have only cost GW $250,000.00 or so, maybe less.

Maybe it is over the mark, but I know that it was the estimate the defense had made based on their own costs and how much larger GW's team was. Also consider that estimate is pre-trial costs and then trial and post trial costs together.

Another consideration is their personnel costs with bringing people over here, which wasn't part of that estimate.

weeble1000 wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:
Has GW divulged how much they've spent on legal fees yet?

Not explicitly, no. Not that I have seen. It is likely buried somewhere in the financial statements. I'm not terribly educated in reading and interpreting those things, so I have sort of been waiting to see if someone finds something about it. I doubt we'll ever know for sure unless GW sues Foley and Lardner for malpractice or something and there's public documents that disclose the fees.

I probably should have said "what GW has spent on the case all together" rather than just legal fees. I'm not exactly the best at accounting but as a public company don't they have to include the costs of the trial on their financial statements once the outcome is clear? I couldn't really find anything related to the case within the past few reports so that's why I was wondering if I was just missing it.

GW took a bigger loss than CHS? CHS was very worried about their ability to continue operations when assets froze. I'd say it at least scared the hell out of them, if it didn't permanently damage them.

That being said, I find it ridiculous that people are making GW out to be some huge nasty bad terrible evil entity. Did they overstep? Yes. Did CHS overstep? Hell yes! CHS was selling what were basically recasts of Death Company bits and just calling them something else, and I can't remember the other bits but I know there were more blatant rip offs. CHS has plenty of legit stuff, but they had quite a bit of stuff that was VERY blatantly copied as well.

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:
Has GW divulged how much they've spent on legal fees yet?

Not explicitly, no. Not that I have seen. It is likely buried somewhere in the financial statements. I'm not terribly educated in reading and interpreting those things, so I have sort of been waiting to see if someone finds something about it. I doubt we'll ever know for sure unless GW sues Foley and Lardner for malpractice or something and there's public documents that disclose the fees.

I probably should have said "what GW has spent on the case all together" rather than just legal fees. I'm not exactly the best at accounting but as a public company don't they have to include the costs of the trial on their financial statements once the outcome is clear? I couldn't really find anything related to the case within the past few reports so that's why I was wondering if I was just missing it.

A successful defence if IP has the money spent turned into an intangible asset and written off over several years.

 troa wrote:
GW took a bigger loss than CHS? CHS was very worried about their ability to continue operations when assets froze. I'd say it at least scared the hell out of them, if it didn't permanently damage them.

That being said, I find it ridiculous that people are making GW out to be some huge nasty bad terrible evil entity. Did they overstep? Yes. Did CHS overstep? Hell yes! CHS was selling what were basically recasts of Death Company bits and just calling them something else, and I can't remember the other bits but I know there were more blatant rip offs. CHS has plenty of legit stuff, but they had quite a bit of stuff that was VERY blatantly copied as well.

I eagerly await Weeble's response to this

 troa wrote:
CHS was selling what were basically recasts of Death Company bits and just calling them something else

Do you have any proof? Because I don't remember that happening at all.

 troa wrote:
GW took a bigger loss than CHS? CHS was very worried about their ability to continue operations when assets froze. I'd say it at least scared the hell out of them, if it didn't permanently damage them.

That being said, I find it ridiculous that people are making GW out to be some huge nasty bad terrible evil entity. Did they overstep? Yes. Did CHS overstep? Hell yes! CHS was selling what were basically recasts of Death Company bits and just calling them something else, and I can't remember the other bits but I know there were more blatant rip offs. CHS has plenty of legit stuff, but they had quite a bit of stuff that was VERY blatantly copied as well.

Every few weeks when following the case a new person has joined the discussion, read nothing, and spouted complete rubbish. CHS didn't steal anything, and certainly did not recast. The whole point of the litigation proved that it isn't wrong to make something that looks like the product of another company as long as you don't attempt to pass it off (CHS never said they were official GW parts) abd don't use their intellectual property. Point on this, the basic shape of a shoulder pad and stuff like skills and flames do not quality for copyright even if GW think it should.

If you're not going to take any interest in the discussion then I don't think you should join the discussion. It just wastes people's time having to explain yet again why CHA weren't recasting or ripping off. Hell if they had then the court case would have been wrapped up very quickly in GW's favour, get a clue.

And as for evil companies, they went after an unrelated author for using the words space marine in the title of her book. GW didn't invent space marines, and they certainly can't copyright the concept of marines in space. If the shoe fits, wear it.

I made all of the blank shoulder pads for CHS and I can assure you those were not copies. Every other shoulder pad CHS produced was sculpted atop the blanks I produced for them, so those weren't copies. Besides shoulder pads I don't think there were any other Death Company-esque parts so I can't speak to that other than to say I know most of the other sculptors were sculpting because I saw greens as masters and not a single GW part.

 skyth wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:
Has GW divulged how much they've spent on legal fees yet?

Not explicitly, no. Not that I have seen. It is likely buried somewhere in the financial statements. I'm not terribly educated in reading and interpreting those things, so I have sort of been waiting to see if someone finds something about it. I doubt we'll ever know for sure unless GW sues Foley and Lardner for malpractice or something and there's public documents that disclose the fees.

I probably should have said "what GW has spent on the case all together" rather than just legal fees. I'm not exactly the best at accounting but as a public company don't they have to include the costs of the trial on their financial statements once the outcome is clear? I couldn't really find anything related to the case within the past few reports so that's why I was wondering if I was just missing it.

A successful defence if IP has the money spent turned into an intangible asset and written off over several years.

Thanks for the clarification.

 troa wrote:
GW took a bigger loss than CHS? CHS was very worried about their ability to continue operations when assets froze. I'd say it at least scared the hell out of them, if it didn't permanently damage them.

That being said, I find it ridiculous that people are making GW out to be some huge nasty bad terrible evil entity. Did they overstep? Yes. Did CHS overstep? Hell yes! CHS was selling what were basically recasts of Death Company bits and just calling them something else, and I can't remember the other bits but I know there were more blatant rip offs. CHS has plenty of legit stuff, but they had quite a bit of stuff that was VERY blatantly copied as well.

GW did not 'overstep'. GW engaged in wholesale legal bullying. The company made such spurious legal claims that it should have been a case of abuse of process. Who in their right mind tries to claim that they have an unregistered trademark on the phrase "grenade launcher?" Seriously...seriously...that's not overstepping, that's bull.

The company's counsel was sanctioned for hiding documents, GW withheld documents multiple times in discovery, GW tried to trick artists into retroactively giving up rights to their creations, GW tried to seize a man's personal assets to satisfy a debt it did not care about just to avoid having the case examined by a panel of appellate court judges, GW's witnesses testified under oath to things that we know are far less than true.

Three law firms and the Lawyers for Creative arts worked on the case pro-bono in a virtually unprecedented act of representing a profitable entity in civil litigation. They didn't do that because GW 'overstepped' a bit. They did that because there was a manifest injustice at work.

To be fair, CHS certainly overstepped. But as I have always said, if the lawsuit was just about the few areas in which CHS may have crossed the line, nobody would have come to the company's defense and the case would have been settled out of court within 3 months. Instead, GW claimed that every product CHS created and sold was infringing in some way unspecified at times until literally weeks before the trial. Despite making such claims, GW routinely dropped claims, often when CHS engaged in an extraordinary expense to uncover a piece of total bull.

For example, GW dropped the mantis warrior claim after CHS discovered that GW had been asking artists (who they claimed they didn't have contact info for) to retroactively assign rights, and Gary Chalk swore an affidavit to that effect. In another example, GW dropped a claim after it took CHS three years to figure out that CHS literally had no product that could possibly have been accused of infringing the asserted artwork. GW dropped claims against things like generic ammo belts after requiring CHS to conduct discovery on those claims, including depositions, motion practice, and legal research.

Alan Merrett testified that GW's claims "sounded crazy" and "weren't the strongest." GW knew it was slinging BS. The tragedy of the case was that Judge Kennelly allowed them to do it.

weeble1000 wrote:

 troa wrote:
not needed

...

The company's counsel was sanctioned for hiding documents, GW lied multiple times in discovery, GW tried to trick artists into retroactively giving up rights to their creations, GW tried to seize a man's personal assets to satisfy a debt it did not care about just to avoid having the case examined by a panel of appellate court judges, GW's witnesses testified under oath to things that we know are far less than true.

...

I was wondering if you are willing to answer this: In continental, Roman law heritage it is strictly forbidden for a witness to lie (although person which is accused or brought to court trial has a right to lie in his defense) and judges must warn witnesses that if they lie they will suffer prosecution under the misdemeanor law or tort law (I am not sure which translation would be correct). So in short if you are party in case you can lie to try to defend yourself but as a witness you HAVE to tell the truth or suffer consequences, how did they get away with it.
I presume case was ruled under Anglo-American law system.
P.S. Sorry if I am not clear enough but I am not a native English speaker (typer in this case )

I think I get what you mean.

There's "contempt of court" and similar for when people are caught lying under oath.

Perjury is the crime of lying under oath in court.

If deliberate lies can be proven (rather than simply being creative versions of the truth or misrememberings) then jail time may await.

Also, suborning perjury - a lawyer knowing someone is lying/will lie and allowing it to proceed - may have possible legal or professional consequences.

"lied" was perhaps a strong word for me to use. The words Judge Kennelly used were "Deliberately or at least recklessly."

Although, "deliberately" not producing documents responsive to an extant discovery request is, what, lying by omission? To lie requires intent, and when Judge Kennelly wrote the word "deliberate" he meant an intentional act.

Separately from that, GW responded to an interrogatory requesting the contact information for the artists of all asserted works. GW's response was that it did not have such contact information. GW's response to this interrogatory was, I believe, dated after the dates on which GW contacted one Gary Chalk, author of the asserted Mantis Warrior artwork, by both snail mail and email.

When someone asks for any contact information that you possess for an individual, and your response is that you don't have any such contact info even though you have recently contacted that person by two means of communication, what would you call that? Bear in mind that these communications came both from GW general counsel Gil Stevenson and Alan Merrett.

We also know that GW sent out these requests for retroactive assignments to authors other than Gary Chalk. The court record includes a few more of them, but I have also had conversations with various recipients. I heard, for example, that Ronnie Renton received such a request, laughed about it, and put it in his desk drawer. In other words, GW sent out lots of such requests, and yet produced a paucity of actual contact info.

GW also responded to an interrogatory requesting any and all communications regarding Chapterhouse Studios, and GW's response was that there were none. Not a single company email saying the word "Chapterhouse." Now, the only way to prove that false would have required court-ordered third party email searching, etc. But it frankly defies credulity on its face.

GW was also sanctioned with an adverse inference for spoliation of evidence.

And then there's the stuff GW's witnesses testified to that us wargamers know is bullgack, such as Alan Merrett testifying that GW's works do not reference anything aside from other GW works. This, of course, is total BS. Even Judge Kennelly said in a hearing that "there's nothing new under the sun," and that therefore CHapterhouse Studios was entitled to know the sources of inspiration for GW's asserted works of art. Which, of course, GW responded to with its mantra: there are none.

So perhaps "lie" was a strong word to use, but it was used in the interest of brevity.

weeble1000 wrote:
So perhaps "lie" was a strong word to use, but it was used in the interest of brevity.

I ain't no fancy big city lawyer, and I am not familiar with the legal terms and what would fit the definition of 'lie' in technical terms there, but everything you just said sure as hell sounds like blatant lying to me. If anything it seems like "lie" is not a strong enough word...

OK thank you very much for clarification.
How mighty have fallen, one would think that corporation like GW would have better attorneys who would advice against this charade, but hey they tried bluff and it didnt worked but they were so deep in it they couldnt just walk out anymore.

 Torga_DW wrote:
And as for evil companies, they went after an unrelated author for using the words space marine in the title of her book. GW didn't invent space marines, and they certainly can't copyright the concept of marines in space. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Wasn't Spots more along the lines of "We have the copyright for the Space Marine title in video games - does it also apply to eBooks"?

beast_gts wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
And as for evil companies, they went after an unrelated author for using the words space marine in the title of her book. GW didn't invent space marines, and they certainly can't copyright the concept of marines in space. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Wasn't Spots more along the lines of "We have the copyright for the Space Marine title in video games - does it also apply to eBooks"?

The Spots thing was total BS from the start. It was , 'doesn't DMCA apply to eBooks?' The dispute was resolved when the EFF pointed out that you can't issue a DMCA takedown notification for alleged trademark infringement.

The "C" in DMCA stands for "Copyright." Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Also, trademarks apply to specific categories of goods, and GW's marks are not famous marks.

Also, book titles are not the subject of a trademark unless they are explicitly used to mark a series of books, e.g Harry Potter and XYZ; XYZ, A Novel of the Dresden Files.

weeble1000 wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
And as for evil companies, they went after an unrelated author for using the words space marine in the title of her book. GW didn't invent space marines, and they certainly can't copyright the concept of marines in space. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Wasn't Spots more along the lines of "We have the copyright for the Space Marine title in video games - does it also apply to eBooks"?

The Spots thing was total BS from the start. It was , 'doesn't DMCA apply to eBooks?' The dispute was resolved when the EFF pointed out that you can't issue a DMCA takedown notification for alleged trademark infringement.

The "C" in DMCA stands for "Copyright." Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Also, trademarks apply to specific categories of goods, and GW's marks are not famous marks.

Also, book titles are not the subject of a trademark unless they are explicitly used to mark a series of books, e.g Harry Potter and XYZ; XYZ, A Novel of the Dresden Files.

Didn't it also turn out that they didn't have an 'implied trademark' on Space Marine, in any event? (I believe that was the term that they tried to use.)

That case was when I gave up on GW entirely - I used to hope that they would pull their heads out of their nether regions. After that... my only concern about GW going under was what would happen to third party companies. I would be more upset if Victoria Miniatures or Kromlech went under than if GW sank into a swamp.

Mind you, that case also got GW international attention as being IP bullies, making it harder for them to try that crap again. (It even showed up in The Christian Science Monitor....)

The Auld Grump

Thanks. A bit of rose-tinted glasses there I think. :-)

Space Marine is a registered GW trademark, although it is eminently contestable.

At the end of the day, you don't get to send a DMCA takedown over a trademark dispute. GW was pissing into the wind on that one.

In theory, GW could have gone after MCA Hogarth anyway, even after Amazon put the eBook back up, but the EFF wasn't fething around and GW was already neck deep in the CHS lawsuit.

The EFF would have completely trashed the "SPACE MARINE" mark. In a case where it was the only mark at issue, GW would likely have lost the mark.

weeble1000 wrote:
Space Marine is a registered GW trademark, although it is eminently contestable.

At the end of the day, you don't get to send a DMCA takedown over a trademark dispute. GW was pissing into the wind on that one.

In theory, GW could have gone after MCA Hogarth anyway, even after Amazon put the eBook back up, but the EFF wasn't fething around and GW was already neck deep in the CHS lawsuit.

The EFF would have completely trashed the "SPACE MARINE" mark. In a case where it was the only mark at issue, GW would likely have lost the mark.

Yeah... the EFF has deep backing.

Thank you for the clarification.

Have they bothered sending Merrett to school to find out how IP works yet?

It seems that if you are going to run around suing folks then it would be a good idea to find out what you are suing them for, first.

And, Lords and Ladies... the testimony about WWI tanks and Landraiders in the Chapterhouse case....

I am still annoyed with that damned judge. He just wanted the case out of his courtroom.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* I would have donated money to Chapterhouse if they had continued the appeals....

 aka_mythos wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
By the time the suit went before the jury it was estimated GW spent $6 million. Just as much time, but many more man hours and paper work was generated between then and by the time a settlement was reached bringing the defense's estimate of GW's litigation cost up to $12 million. This is GW's profits for a year and why GWs assertion at the end of trial that the $25,000 was all it ever wanted was clearly insincere.

I think that's way over the mark, actually. Probably seven figures, definitely not eight. I would be flabbergasted if GW spent 10 million on the litigation. I've worked on cases with a million dollar monthly burn rate, and the GW v CHS case wasn't in the same league.

After the verdict GW did...basically no work on the case. GW's post-judgement filings were crude hack jobs that literally had glaring copy/paste errors. The post-trial costs/fees could not have been a shadow of what the pre-trial costs/fees were. There was basically no motion practice, seemingly little in the way of meet and confers, clearly a few settlement hearings with accompanying document exchanges, but no depositions, little legal research, few court appearances, almost no travel, no experts. The entire appeal process would probably have only cost GW $250,000.00 or so, maybe less.

Maybe it is over the mark, but I know that it was the estimate the defense had made based on their own costs and how much larger GW's team was. Also consider that estimate is pre-trial costs and then trial and post trial costs together.

Another consideration is their personnel costs with bringing people over here, which wasn't part of that estimate.

Don't forget that Chapter House had several of the best IP specialist law firms in the USA on their side while GW had a relatively junior who appears to have had to lied and cheated his way through some key parts of the evidence.

So maybe the costs do not scale up correctnly.

Jonathan Moskin is senior counsel at Foley and Lardner. He is no trial lawyer, to be sure, but he is experienced.

That also means he should know how to follow the rules of evidence. That sanction he got was a personal section, by the way, because it was his email communications with the copyright office that were withheld, communications from his F&L email address.

So it was never an issue of the client not telling the attorney the truth, at least not that particular sanction.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
By the time the suit went before the jury it was estimated GW spent $6 million. Just as much time, but many more man hours and paper work was generated between then and by the time a settlement was reached bringing the defense's estimate of GW's litigation cost up to $12 million. This is GW's profits for a year and why GWs assertion at the end of trial that the $25,000 was all it ever wanted was clearly insincere.

I think that's way over the mark, actually. Probably seven figures, definitely not eight. I would be flabbergasted if GW spent 10 million on the litigation. I've worked on cases with a million dollar monthly burn rate, and the GW v CHS case wasn't in the same league.

After the verdict GW did...basically no work on the case. GW's post-judgement filings were crude hack jobs that literally had glaring copy/paste errors. The post-trial costs/fees could not have been a shadow of what the pre-trial costs/fees were. There was basically no motion practice, seemingly little in the way of meet and confers, clearly a few settlement hearings with accompanying document exchanges, but no depositions, little legal research, few court appearances, almost no travel, no experts. The entire appeal process would probably have only cost GW $250,000.00 or so, maybe less.

Maybe it is over the mark, but I know that it was the estimate the defense had made based on their own costs and how much larger GW's team was. Also consider that estimate is pre-trial costs and then trial and post trial costs together.

Another consideration is their personnel costs with bringing people over here, which wasn't part of that estimate.

Don't forget that Chapter House had several of the best IP specialist law firms in the USA on their side while GW had a relatively junior who appears to have had to lied and cheated his way through some key parts of the evidence.

So maybe the costs do not scale up correctnly.

The firm representing GW' was the number 1 firm for this sort of litigation. CHS had the number 2 firm, joined by another one in the top 5. GW had at least 2 senior partners working at all points of this with a third that was involved on paper but never present. CHS had one, that switched out with another, and then an additional senior partner came in from that other firm for the trial phase.GW had about 10 other people working on this suit, CHS had about 7 others.

No, Mythos, I'm going to really have to stop you there.

Foley and Lardner is a good IP firm, but it is not the number one IP litigation law firm, by really any conceivable metric. And I don't know where you got that impression.

F&L is a well-rated US firm, for sure, but by no means the most highly acclaimed, rated, reviewed, paid, or successful firm in the IP litigation practice area. It isn't even among the top 40 or 50 firms in IP litigation when it comes to most trusted industry review publications.

If you look at Legal 500, for example, F&L does not appear on the list for Trademark Litigation, it does not appear on the list for Copyright practice, and it does not appear on the list for full coverage patent practice (which includes contentious litigation).

Winston and Strawn, on the other hand, appears on both the Copyright and the Patent lists, in the number three grouping in both respects.

And when it comes to Foley and Lardner itself, Jonathan Moskin is a terrible trial lawyer. But for Jason Keener, an assocaite at the time, Chapterhouse Studios may well have run the table whilst Mr. Moskin was busy texting on his cell phone in front of the jury and letting his key witness run roughshod over him in cross examination. I'm not sure Mr. Moskin even tried a substantive case before GW v CHS, and if he did, it sure didn't show.

F&L only had a single partner on the case (Moskin) and only ever a single associate on the case at any given time. The first two associates on the case were taken off the case when they left the firm. There was doubtless more work going on behind the scenes with paralegals and maybe some other associates, but GW's team was tiny. I also wouldn't be surprised if Keener was brought on to help clean up the case, because even GW's filings got a lot better once Keener was involved.

GW got extremely favorable rulings from the trial judge, CHS had some wretched documents to contend with, and the case was a weeks long, highly complicated mess of ill-defined claims. GW got some things to stick because the jury figured CHS did something wrong. And if the case had been appealed, it very well might have completely evaporated GW's successes at trial, such as they were.

Given that the product was taken down around the time the lawsuits started up and I never took screen captures or ordered it, no I cannot show the specific pieces. The ones that remain up of course were ruled to be fine.

 troa wrote:
Given that the product was taken down around the time the lawsuits started up and I never took screen captures or ordered it, no I cannot show the specific pieces. The ones that remain up of course were ruled to be fine.

Are these the products? They're Blood Angel'ish and no longer on the Chapterhouse site.

http://chapterhousestudios.com/image/data/product%20images/May%20Releases/02orgnl.jpg

Looking forward to reading your summary weeble.

czakk wrote:
Looking forward to reading your summary weeble.

I have been working on it, and I think what I will do is break it up into several short-ish posts going chronologically through the case. I've got the first part done, and I'll post it up tomorrow when I get back home.

Probably best if you post them together.

I think there is an article system here, might be worth looking into that, rather then just a forum post.

I'm sorry about the delay. I've been laid up with a wicked stomach virus.

I posted up the first article.

I hope you feel better. Thanks again for doing this.

Stomach virus, or stomach churning over the GW produced crap you've been sifting through?

Good work Weeble, going for a read now.

Interesting initial write up Weeble. Look forward to seeing the rest.

Thanks Snrub!

Let me know what you guys think about the article. I'm thinking three more should be enough to cover what I want to cover. The idea is to keep it driving towards a consistent point regarding GW's relationship with third party accessory companies, which I honestly think not only defines the case as a whole, but also GW's recent business decisions such as the Astra Militarum thing.

weeble1000 wrote:
Thanks Snrub!

Let me know what you guys think about the article. I'm thinking three more should be enough to cover what I want to cover. The idea is to keep it driving towards a consistent point regarding GW's relationship with third party accessory companies, which I honestly think not only defines the case as a whole, but also GW's recent business decisions such as the Astra Militarum thing.

That last is an exercise in futility in any event - most folks that I know still call them Imperial Guard, and I am pretty danged sure that if Chapterhouse started selling parts for Astra Militarum instead of parts for Imperial Guard then that would be just as legal.

Making third party parts is legal - changing the name of the base component does not change that....

The Auld Grump - Per Ardua Ad Astra....

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Thanks Snrub!

Let me know what you guys think about the article. I'm thinking three more should be enough to cover what I want to cover. The idea is to keep it driving towards a consistent point regarding GW's relationship with third party accessory companies, which I honestly think not only defines the case as a whole, but also GW's recent business decisions such as the Astra Militarum thing.

That last is an exercise in futility in any event - most folks that I know still call them Imperial Guard, and I am pretty danged sure that if Chapterhouse started selling parts for Astra Militarum instead of parts for Imperial Guard then that would be just as legal.

Making third party parts is legal - changing the name of the base component does not change that....

The Auld Grump - Per Ardua Ad Astra....

As I will discuss in the articles, I think it has a lot to do with GW feeling threatened. The company shouldn't feel threatened by the likes of CHS, MaxMini, Scibor, PuppetsWar, HiTech, etc., but it clearly does feel threatened.

GW wants to be the top dog, but like a usurper to the throne, the company always feels threatened, even when it shouldn't. It is almost like GW fell victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy, having been foretold that the third party accessory market was to be the company's downfall, GW went about trying to prevent that from happening, and in the process put itself in a much weaker and more self-destructive position.

GW is not comfortable with its brand integrity and brand loyalty, and maybe that's because GW has actually done some research and seen terrifying numbers, who knows? GW isn't even willing to be honest with itself. Just think about Merrett sitting on the witness stand in Federal court saying this:

I mean, Mr. Villacci might claim to be a fan of our products. He might claim to be an actual -- a hobbyist. He might claim to be someone who actually understands what it is to collect and play our games. But if he had any notion, any inkling of what it means to be a fan, he'd know darn well that every single thing we put in every single one of our books, every single one of our codex, every unit, every character, every model, every vehicle is a model that we intend to make and sell. So when you hear his counsel telling you, oh, there are gaps, he's doing our fans a favor, let me tell you, he's not doing our fans a favor. He's lining his own pockets at our expense. Where's his 31 years of development of our IP? Where is it? He can't show you any creative of his own creations.

That is paranoia.

Any fan of GW's products knows exactly why a third party accessory market flourishes, and it actually reflects really well on the strength of GW's products and the strength of GW's brands. And the worst part of it is that here Merrett is saying that the only real value GW has is the length of time it has been in business. Merrett isn't talking about how unique and fantastic GW's artwork is. Merrett isn't talking about the fantastic quality of GW's products compared to the rest of the industry. All he's saying is the GW has been doing it the longest, and so the company deserves its top position.

That's certainly true if you trust your brand and trust your customers. It isn't true if you trust neither.

weeble1000 wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Thanks Snrub!

Let me know what you guys think about the article. I'm thinking three more should be enough to cover what I want to cover. The idea is to keep it driving towards a consistent point regarding GW's relationship with third party accessory companies, which I honestly think not only defines the case as a whole, but also GW's recent business decisions such as the Astra Militarum thing.

That last is an exercise in futility in any event - most folks that I know still call them Imperial Guard, and I am pretty danged sure that if Chapterhouse started selling parts for Astra Militarum instead of parts for Imperial Guard then that would be just as legal.

Making third party parts is legal - changing the name of the base component does not change that....

The Auld Grump - Per Ardua Ad Astra....

As I will discuss in the articles, I think it has a lot to do with GW feeling threatened. The company shouldn't feel threatened by the likes of CHS, MaxMini, Scibor, PuppetsWar, HiTech, etc., but it clearly does feel threatened.

GW wants to be the top dog, but like a usurper to the throne, the company always feels threatened, even when it shouldn't. It is almost like GW fell victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy, having been foretold that the third party accessory market was to be the company's downfall, GW went about trying to prevent that from happening, and in the process put itself in a much weaker and more self-destructive position.

GW is not comfortable with its brand integrity and brand loyalty, and maybe that's because GW has actually done some research and seen terrifying numbers, who knows? GW isn't even willing to be honest with itself. Just think about Merrett sitting on the witness stand in Federal court saying this:

I mean, Mr. Villacci might claim to be a fan of our products. He might claim to be an actual -- a hobbyist. He might claim to be someone who actually understands what it is to collect and play our games. But if he had any notion, any inkling of what it means to be a fan, he'd know darn well that every single thing we put in every single one of our books, every single one of our codex, every unit, every character, every model, every vehicle is a model that we intend to make and sell. So when you hear his counsel telling you, oh, there are gaps, he's doing our fans a favor, let me tell you, he's not doing our fans a favor. He's lining his own pockets at our expense. Where's his 31 years of development of our IP? Where is it? He can't show you any creative of his own creations.

That is paranoia.

Any fan of GW's products knows exactly why a third party accessory market flourishes, and it actually reflects really well on the strength of GW's products and the strength of GW's brands. And the worst part of it is that here Merrett is saying that the only real value GW has is the length of time it has been in business. Merrett isn't talking about how unique and fantastic GW's artwork is. Merrett isn't talking about the fantastic quality of GW's products compared to the rest of the industry. All he's saying is the GW has been doing it the longest, and so the company deserves its top position.

That's certainly true if you trust your brand and trust your customers. It isn't true if you trust neither.

I wonder if the fact that some of those folks just plain make better models than GW does plays a role....

But then that is the whole point of third party parts in the modeling industry - fully detailed cockpit interiors, gun emplacements, etc. are made by third parties - often from etched brass. And some of the most successful model companies send those third party companies models well in advance - because having hyper detailed parts available helps their sales. (Would people buy working turn signals for their Land Raiders?)

In the case of some of those third party parts for GW, they can turn a pretty crappy looking model into something that looks pretty decent.



And the thing is that in order to use those wheels and suspension you still need the Taurox - this is something that could help drive sales for GW.... (Though why an army in the 41st M needs an exposed radiator....)

I know somebody that is building an all Australian Imperi... excuse me... Astra Militarum... army using Victoria Miniatures parts. (Expensive - and he has been working on it for three four editions now....) And, again, he needed to get a lot of GW models before he had anything like a fieldable force.

Properly handled, the availability of third party parts can help GW. Instead they either ignore or abuse the companies that could be a resource for them.

The Auld Grump - Joe is using the Taurox as a vehicle that has been seconded to the military, instead of as a military vehicle....

weeble1000 wrote:

GW is not comfortable with its brand integrity and brand loyalty, and maybe that's because GW has actually done some research and seen terrifying numbers, who knows? GW isn't even willing to be honest with itself. Just think about Merrett sitting on the witness stand in Federal court saying this:

I mean, Mr. Villacci might claim to be a fan of our products. He might claim to be an actual -- a hobbyist. He might claim to be someone who actually understands what it is to collect and play our games. But if he had any notion, any inkling of what it means to be a fan, he'd know darn well that every single thing we put in every single one of our books, every single one of our codex, every unit, every character, every model, every vehicle is a model that we intend to make and sell. So when you hear his counsel telling you, oh, there are gaps, he's doing our fans a favor, let me tell you, he's not doing our fans a favor. He's lining his own pockets at our expense. Where's his 31 years of development of our IP? Where is it? He can't show you any creative of his own creations.

That is paranoia.

I would go beyond paranoia. That reads to me as someone that seriously needs to seek help.

weeble1000 wrote:


GW wants to be the top dog, but like a usurper to the throne, the company always feels threatened, even when it shouldn't. It is almost like GW fell victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy, having been foretold that the third party accessory market was to be the company's downfall, GW went about trying to prevent that from happening, and in the process put itself in a much weaker and more self-destructive position.

In many ways, GW is a usurper (given the context framed). They didn't start out selling their own shtick. They started out selling shtick for other peoples shtick. Heck, even most of their designs are taken from other peoples shtick.

When so much of your empire is built upon the material you kifed from so many other people...then you might be a bit paranoid that someone will do the same to you.

weeble1000 wrote:
Thanks Snrub!

Let me know what you guys think about the article. I'm thinking three more should be enough to cover what I want to cover. The idea is to keep it driving towards a consistent point regarding GW's relationship with third party accessory companies, which I honestly think not only defines the case as a whole, but also GW's recent business decisions such as the Astra Militarum thing.

Very interesting article. I stepped away from the case soon after it was filed, so its really interesting to read up on it now.

Adding Paulson to play venue games is really, really lousy. It is a really fast way for an attorney to lose credibilty with the bench.

 Polonius wrote:

Adding Paulson to play venue games is really, really lousy. It is a really fast way for an attorney to lose credibilty with the bench.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. I daresay that in most instances it would have. Kennelly's view of the case was 'a pox on both your houses'.

weeble1000 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Adding Paulson to play venue games is really, really lousy. It is a really fast way for an attorney to lose credibilty with the bench.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. I daresay that in most instances it would have. Kennelly's view of the case was 'a pox on both your houses'.

Yeah. I meant more so in general. Judges talk amongst themselves...

weeble1000 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Adding Paulson to play venue games is really, really lousy. It is a really fast way for an attorney to lose credibilty with the bench.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. I daresay that in most instances it would have. Kennelly's view of the case was 'a pox on both your houses'.

I really think that Kennelly felt offended to have the case land in front of him. Not sure why he didn't see the significance of it (both within the particular industry and larger copyright/trademark law) - but most of his commentary seemed to indicate he didn't think it was a case worthy of his time or attention.

Judge Kenelly was an interesting guy, very no nonsense, I'd gotten the impression that he thought that it was a waste of time and this stuff should have all been handled outside of court. I don't know if it's from professional work or if he's a closet nerd outside of court but he had a good familiarity with the major sci-fi lines, star trek, star wars, aliens, star ship troopers, etc he even mentioned a reference to Flash Gordan at one point so he certainly wasn't blind as to where some of the concepts were being adapted from.

Unfortunately his personal opinion or experience doesn't determine the case and each party has to navigate those issues and how to present their own version to the jury. I think there were times where he very easily could make connections to the source material that GW or CH borrowed items from, but it's up to the lawyers and jury to prove/disprove the ownership of those particular expressions.

There were multiple times where he had a very notable forehead vein throbbing away which seemed to happen most often when he was dealing with Moskin. Which was amusing although the rest of the situation was quiet serious.

One of the points of aggravation was the giant pile of bul-gak in GW's filings. In their initial complaint they loaded up all sorts of copy and pasted dribble that sounded like it was taken off the back of one of their books. My lawyer put it like this, the case he worked prior to the GW case was a class action suit that involved 12 companies and had a $110 million judgement at stake and the initial complaint was less than 5 pages in total. Meanwhile GW's complaint was 80+ pages and it didn't even specify any sort of indication of what type of judgement they were seeking. 80 pages to cover what should have been summed up in a 3 page document. This type of paper landslide continued throughout the entire trial, every time there's even a tiny revision to the document it has to be reprinted (in full) and provided to each party in triplicate (at minimum) That meant that to make one tiny revision or updating only a single sentence required reprinting 700-800 pages, every time. Revisions were happening on a weekly basis it seemed incredibly wasteful to say the least. That's how the printing bill alone ran into the ten of thousands.

Kennelly seemed to put up with a lot of nonsense though. It's really not on to act as though the case is an annoyance, but then let GW lawyers pull several tricks with only a slap on the wrist. The stunt they tried to retroactively get copyright signed over from artists of 20 years ago is a disgrace. The deception involving the patent office over filings for shoulder pads was also very dodgy. If Kennelly was annoyed by the case dragging on he should have used a firmer hand against the stalling tactics constantly being used.

weeble1000 wrote:The company shouldn't feel threatened by the likes of CHS, MaxMini, Scibor, PuppetsWar, HiTech, etc., but it clearly does feel threatened.

Agreed. GW has nothing to feel threatened by. No slight intended against any of the 3rd party miniatures makers but they aren't a drop in the ocean compared to GW. I don't see how even the biggest 3rd party place could be a "threat" to a company like GW.

Out of interest, does anyone know how the likes of Corvus-Belli and Privateer Press stack up against Games Workshop in terms of... anything. Sales/popularity/presence/etc.

paulson games wrote:One of the points of aggravation was the giant pile of bul-gak in GW's filings. In their initial complaint they loaded up all sorts of copy and pasted dribble that sounded like it was taken off the back of one of their books. My lawyer put it like this, the case he worked prior to the GW case was a class action suit that involved 12 companies and had a $110 million judgement at stake and the initial complaint was less than 5 pages in total. Meanwhile GW's complaint was 80+ pages and it didn't even specify any sort of indication of what type of judgement they were seeking. 80 pages to cover what should have been summed up in a 3 page document. This type of paper landslide continued throughout the entire trial, every time there's even a tiny revision to the document it has to be reprinted (in full) and provided to each party in triplicate (at minimum) That meant that to make one tiny revision or updating only a single sentence required reprinting 700-800 pages, every time. Revisions were happening on a weekly basis it seemed incredibly wasteful to say the least. That's how the printing bill alone ran into the ten of thousands.

What? Really? That's bogus that is. Does that mean some sorry sod had to read through the whole document every time it was revised?

 Snrub wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:The company shouldn't feel threatened by the likes of CHS, MaxMini, Scibor, PuppetsWar, HiTech, etc., but it clearly does feel threatened.

Agreed. GW has nothing to feel threatened by. No slight intended against any of the 3rd party miniatures makers but they aren't a drop in the ocean compared to GW. I don't see how even the biggest 3rd party place could be a "threat" to a company like GW.

Out of interest, does anyone know how the likes of Corvus-Belli and Privateer Press stack up against Games Workshop in terms of... anything. Sales/popularity/presence/etc.

In store our PP game night gets several time the attendance of the GW night. PP tournaments typically pull a dozen people minimum with people traveling from neighboring states to attend. GW still sells more though to the tune of twice the sales of PP last year. I seem em in there every week buying stuff, but they don't come to the store to play.

 Snrub wrote:

Out of interest, does anyone know how the likes of Corvus-Belli and Privateer Press stack up against Games Workshop in terms of... anything. Sales/popularity/presence/etc.

Spartan Games' (far from the biggest fish out there) Dystonian Wars 2.0 outsold 7th ed 40k 7:1 when they where released (within a week of each other) through Australia's largest FLGS. That same store has reported that GW product only makes up 12-15% of their revenue these days. Anything other than that is purely speculative but it looks like GW have completely lost the AU market.

 jonolikespie wrote:
...but it looks like GW have completely lost the AU market.

Oddly enough, no, apparently not. Their last financials reported that despite some massive losses on the magazine front, they actually saw a small increase in sales in Oz last year. Although it's likely that most of that is just from GW making it harder to buy from overseas, resulting in those customers who didn't just quit buying altogether in response to that braindead decision returning to buying from within Oz instead. I think the next financial report will probably be a more accurate representation of just how sales are actually going down here.

Quite a few Independants do seem to be reporting decreased sales, but I have to wonder how much of that is just money going direct to GW due to the movement of so much of the range to direct only.

 insaniak wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
...but it looks like GW have completely lost the AU market.

Oddly enough, no, apparently not. Their last financials reported that despite some massive losses on the magazine front, they actually saw a small increase in sales in Oz last year. Although it's likely that most of that is just from GW making it harder to buy from overseas, resulting in those customers who didn't just quit buying altogether in response to that braindead decision returning to buying from within Oz instead. I think the next financial report will probably be a more accurate representation of just how sales are actually going down here.

Quite a few Independants do seem to be reporting decreased sales, but I have to wonder how much of that is just money going direct to GW due to the movement of so much of the range to direct only.

GW will no longer be reporting by region, and instead by channel. So no way to confirm this, sadly, but i suspect sales in oz will have gone down.

 paulson games wrote:
One of the points of aggravation was the giant pile of bul-gak in GW's filings. In their initial complaint they loaded up all sorts of copy and pasted dribble that sounded like it was taken off the back of one of their books. My lawyer put it like this, the case he worked prior to the GW case was a class action suit that involved 12 companies and had a $110 million judgement at stake and the initial complaint was less than 5 pages in total. Meanwhile GW's complaint was 80+ pages and it didn't even specify any sort of indication of what type of judgement they were seeking. 80 pages to cover what should have been summed up in a 3 page document. This type of paper landslide continued throughout the entire trial, every time there's even a tiny revision to the document it has to be reprinted (in full) and provided to each party in triplicate (at minimum) That meant that to make one tiny revision or updating only a single sentence required reprinting 700-800 pages, every time. Revisions were happening on a weekly basis it seemed incredibly wasteful to say the least. That's how the printing bill alone ran into the ten of thousands.

...wow...

 Snrub wrote:
What? Really? That's bogus that is. Does that mean some sorry sod had to read through the whole document every time it was revised?

I fething hope not. Something like that should be classed as torture and GW should have been criminally charged if that was the case.

Anyone made a list of all the models that had rules prior to this court case which have now been axed? Anyone look at the decision and make some speculation on what GW cuts next because they don't have the IP locked up tight and therefore don't want rules to exist?

Barfolomew wrote:
Anyone made a list of all the models that had rules prior to this court case which have now been axed? Anyone look at the decision and make some speculation on what GW cuts next because they don't have the IP locked up tight and therefore don't want rules to exist?

Off the top of my head,

Tyranid Parasite of Mortrex
Tyranid Doom of Malantai
IG/AS Sly Marbo
IG/AS Chenkov(or whatever his name was)
Couple Ork characters
Dark Eldar Asdrubael Vect
Dark Eldar Baron Sathonyx
Dark Eldar Lady Malys

The Tyranid and Dark Eldar characters didn't have models(other than Vect, and the Doom was replaced by the Neurothrope).

Marbo had a model. Old, but current. Pretty sure Chenkov had an old ass model too.

Did Eldar ever get their Seer Council on Bikes and did Space Marines ever get their Conversion Beamer?

One of the techmarine models has a conversion beamer. There are also some Forgeworld models.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

Barfolomew wrote:
Anyone made a list of all the models that had rules prior to this court case which have now been axed? Anyone look at the decision and make some speculation on what GW cuts next because they don't have the IP locked up tight and therefore don't want rules to exist?

Off the top of my head,

Tyranid Parasite of Mortrex
Tyranid Doom of Malantai
IG/AS Sly Marbo
IG/AS Chenkov(or whatever his name was)
Couple Ork characters
Dark Eldar Asdrubael Vect
Dark Eldar Baron Sathonyx
Dark Eldar Lady Malys

The Tyranid and Dark Eldar characters didn't have models(other than Vect, and the Doom was replaced by the Neurothrope).

Is that a thing that's happening? Games Workshop is cutting units and therefore shrinking the hobby because they don't want anyone else profiting where they are not?

Yep, it's been happening for a while.

Not familiar with GW's lunatic tendencies? Go look up the "Spots the Space Marine" debacle, it'll show you how crazy they've gotten trying to protect their IPs that they originally created from everyone else's concepts.

I never go too far down the rabbit hole but I was aware of the space marine issue with Spots the Space Marine. But I think removing units is a step beyond frivolous and/or overly aggressive IP lawsuits just to limit other companies' sales.

It is ridiculous but sadly it seems to be the way the company is going. It's really pretty terrible that this is what they are worried about rather than producing quality product people want to buy.

The 'benefit' of them removing entries due to lack of a model is that they get to re-release them as a DLC when they bother creating said model.
It's a nasty thing to do, and they usually change the model quite wildly. So older models, if they ever existed, look out of place.

And, no, there were never Warlock or Farseer jetbike models.
Look to CHS for that.

Yeah, to be honest, I don't have a problem with GW not including things that they don't have models for in the codexes. The lack of appropriate models for various things is something that people have been complaining about for as long as I've been in the hobby (more than 20 years now....)

But removing existing units rather than just releasing the damn models for them was a bit of a surprising move.

Were the other parts of this article still being worked on?

 AduroT wrote:
Were the other parts of this article still being worked on?

I'm curious as well.. It really is an interesting read.