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So, the case is over. What do you guys think the likely impact is going to be on the hobby, as well as on the HHHobby?

The things that seem clear are that GWS is no longer going to release codexes that don't have all the associated models. That has already happened, as a consequence of the case being filed at all.

Do you think it will result in more, less, or no changes in the GW C&D's being filed?

Do you think justice was done? Why, or why not?

Hopefully we can discuss the ramifications of the suit here, as all of these things would be offtopic in the main thread. (If you want to talk about the filings and that alone, you should go there instead.)

I think the verdicts given are pretty fair, all together. It's a somewhat phyrric victory for GW, they lost a fair few of their claimed copyrights, and they've failed to have CHS shut down completely (though they might have issues with the fine), and most of what CHS was doing has been ruled as legitimate business, which will be a boon for the 3rd party bitz industry.

That said, CHS defintely deserved to be slapped down on some things, and the Doomseer was one thing (There were others, just the one I was most familiar with) I thought had definitely crossed the line, and it's good to see it ruled as such. Copying someones entire designs that closely is not good for the industry, as primary model makers should have some say over their actual designs.

As for the wider effects... I think things will keep on as they have been, and there won't be huge changes. There will still be a vigorous 3rd party bitz market, GW won't lose out much from it, as most people will still be buying GW base products anyway. The question now is whether each side will take their lumps, or whether they'll appeal the ruling hoping for something better.

Hard to say as of yet, since we don't specifically know what was won and lost. It also appears that until the appeals process is completed, we won't know what the final verdicts are.


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Hopefully it makes GW pull back on their overly-aggressive C&Ds, since this will hopefully make it easier for small companies to secure some pro-bono representation.

Is there a detailed list of all the individual rulings? I know GW had put a couple of hundred things into the trial and lost on roughly 2/3rds of them

We don't have a full verdict yet? I just sort of want the short summary of what happened and what it now means for the industry.

Yeah, I haven't been able to find any kind of clear explanation on what was won or lost, or even if there is a concrete ruling yet. (The best page I found said this was a jury ruling and wasn't final yet.)

I think we will be able to have a more meaningful discussion on the topic when we have a little more information.

The one clear thing I was able to discern from the page I found was that Chapterhouse won on the issue of using the "underlying size and shape" of Games Workshop's space marine shoulder pads. Which is sweet. I'd like to see someone produce actual quality Salamander shoulder pads for something approaching a fair price.

I'll keep checking back until we get some kind of solid information.

Frankly it would have been ridiculous for GW to own a geometrical shape of a specific size. How could it be enforced?

I think both sides will be filing appeals... This isn't done.

It will be interesting to see the whole list of wins and losses as GW fired a buckshot load of claims (arrows crosses etc) and the more generic ones are the Likely losses, so not a big deal. As to the shoulder pads the basic ones are fine to make now (depending on final verdic) but what about marked ones? Hense we need the list to find the detail else it's all guess work.

I don't think it will change anything, truth be told. While I don't think GW's unconcerned about the results over trademarks, I do think it's of less importance to them than the financial judgment. Their strategy for dealing with the third party market has always been, "Comply with this C&D, or we'll crush you." As long as CHS can't afford the damages and goes out of business, I think that's probably all GW was looking for. It doesn't really matter if you're in the right legally if you can't afford to prove it, and most other small studios are probably not going to be able to get a pro bono legal team for the many, many months another one of these would take.

"CHS fought us, was even mostly in the right, and they're still out of business. We've got another million to spend going after you, chumley, if you don't stop selling those power katanas," is a pretty powerful message to send to two guys working out of a basement somewhere.

 Marine_With_Heart wrote:
We don't have a full verdict yet? I just sort of want the short summary of what happened and what it now means for the industry.

The jury have given their verdict but there is still some legal jiggery pokery to be done before there is a final verdict and there may well be an appeal so at this point we know very little.

In the long run I can see GW being more sensible with its C&Ds but I still think that they will be sending them out in bulk. When it comes to backing up those C&Ds with legal action though I suspect that GW will be much more careful, they certainly didn't expect this to blow up in their face.

I can't see much changing in the real world though except that 3rd party manufacturers can now label their products more clearly.

All in all I would call this a victory for CHS, they get to keep most of their product lines and while they do have a fine to pay (why?) the publicity that this case has generated will doubtless be very valuable for them.


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 Seaward wrote:

"CHS fought us, was even mostly in the right, and they're still out of business. We've got another million to spend going after you, chumley, if you don't stop selling those power katanas," is a pretty powerful message to send to two guys working out of a basement somewhere.

Why would they go out of business? Its a $25k fine, which can apparently be paid in installments, for a business with a turn over of about $100k a year and I am willing to bet that people will gladly donate to ensure that CHS survive. GW undoubtably spent far more on their legal fess than CHS ever cost them in terms of 'lost profits' and that is something that GW should be very keen to avoid in the future. The problem for GW is that if they do this again and their next victim gets pro bono representaion (which is probably quite likely given the CHS case) it will end up costing GW a lot of money, again, and may well see them lose even more of their cherised IP. Basically this is very dangerous ground for GW that they would do well to think very carefully about entering again.

 Seaward wrote:
I don't think it will change anything, truth be told. While I don't think GW's unconcerned about the results over trademarks, I do think it's of less importance to them than the financial judgment. Their strategy for dealing with the third party market has always been, "Comply with this C&D, or we'll crush you." As long as CHS can't afford the damages and goes out of business, I think that's probably all GW was looking for. It doesn't really matter if you're in the right legally if you can't afford to prove it, and most other small studios are probably not going to be able to get a pro bono legal team for the many, many months another one of these would take.

"CHS fought us, was even mostly in the right, and they're still out of business. We've got another million to spend going after you, chumley, if you don't stop selling those power katanas," is a pretty powerful message to send to two guys working out of a basement somewhere.

I concur. Intimidation tactics will have lost none of their effectiveness. The fate of CHS being uncertain is the only thing that's actually changed definitively. The rest of the resin kits market would still do well to run away from anything that GW can spin as an infraction.

That's kinda hard to do however when it's GW's honest belief that they "own" even the most generic of sci-fi concepts that have predated their company's existence by many years.

Pretty much everyone making models of soldiers and tanks is at risk.

I'm probably in a minority, but I see this as a bad situation.

If anything, it will make secrecy worse within GW, ideas will be suppressed in fear of being legally plagiarised by parasite companies such as CHS. How can this be anything but bad?

Also - I'm hearing that it's a victory for CHS - as this was a pro-bono case, and GW have been awarded damages, who pays the legal bill? In the UK, it's generally the side which has to pay damages pays the legal costs of the injured party as well - THAT'S what could push CHS put of business.

In the US, each party is responsible for their own legal expenses (barring a few exceptional circumstances, which don't apply here).

My view is that at the least, GW management has been revealed as egotistical and incompetent.

 Ouze wrote:
Do you think it will result in more, less, or no changes in the GW C&D's being filed?

No change. C&Ds will be sent no matter what. Even if GW can't realistically pursue a legal claim and win, they'll still do it to "protect their IP" and intimidate where possible. Also, if GW needs to go to court in the future, having already sent a C&D can only help their position.

I think GW won more than their fair share, but the full details are yet to be known. I don't understand for example where the $25K comes from when CHS can barely be described as 'damaging' GW. What damages? Almost every one of their products requires a GW purchase, and I highly doubt they've taken $25K of shoulder pad sales from GW. Many other things have probably encouraged GW sales oddly enough.

It'll be very interesting to see what other claims they won on, I mean 'powerfists', really? And the Judge seemed very nice to GW given their shenanigans over the last two years. There seem to have been very little consequences for their dubious behaviour in trying to trick previous employees into giving up their rights and the whole thing with the copyright office. Yes GW lost on shoulderpads but the judge still ignored the repeated decision of the copyright office to give GW a chance to argue it in court. And that was still after the funny goings on with GW losing or forgetting about the copyright office decisions and misleading the judge... it seems that action should be taken about their lawyer, according to Weeble on the other thread.

Really I think GW won more than their fair share, because most of what they were claiming was rather generic, but GW just took the approach of flinging as much dirt as possible and some of it did indeed stick. The only things that are questionable are perhaps the doomseer and a couple of others, which they did win on. I've always felt that a GW win was unhealthy for the hobby, because 3rd parties don't damage GW at all and GW want to control a lot of generic ideas. GW don't need to go licencing these third parties, they should just ignore them, they are insignificant in the wider scheme of things.

I don't think it will change GW's approach to sending out C&Ds. They can still do what all big ugly companies can do to much smaller ones, simply threaten a massive legal bill to force compliance. Even if you get pro-bono work, the stress of having this hang over you for over two years with an uncertain outcome is enough to force people into taking down models and the like in line with GW's requests. GW does like taking people to court, it likes frightening people with threats. That will continue I'm sure, because A) it works and B) because GW genuinely seem to believe they own the right to everything.

I think we need someone who understands what's going on to break it down for us.

Trouble is, we don't have a detailed breakdown of the verdict, so nobody really understands what's going on.

From a different perspective, I think it might have a big impact on the 'hobby' in terms of it being a creative medium. Of making something new, converting, making your own pieces - these have always been central to the GW hobby, yet these days WD carries almost none of it. You buy your miniatures, you paint them as intended, you buy the next one.

To be fair I think this has been happening for some time now (a kid commenting on my Pre-Heresy World Eaters, "are those White Scars", and then "why can't you just paint them like they are on the box"?) but I expect this case to completely slam-shut the lid on this part of the hobby - anything at all that will make (the younger gamers) think outside of the box and be creative. In the same way we now will have to have models for everything, lest some other company steal a fraction of a single percentage of GW's sales, we will no longer get those wacky, more 'out there' designs of characters and models in army books that used to help fire the imaginations of games players. The codecies and army books will become even more dull, and by the numbers, if such a thing is possible.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
My view is that at the least, GW management has been revealed as egotistical and incompetent.

Yes and from what I have read... actually, just not very nice people.

Yes, we need an itemised list showing each individual complaint, the reason (TM or copyright) and the decision. That will probably take time to emerge since the judge has to make some kind of decision, and there were hundreds of complaints.

Can say anything before I know the details. Including if Moskin got a penalty for again keeping evidence back.
I expect an appeal by both sides though.

I suspect that one of the consequences of the case will be for GW to include 'unique' elements in its models so it can better claim copyright. In a sci-fi setting this can kind of work, but in a Fantasy setting it leads to silly monsters such as their jabberslythe.

It will be sad to see GW stop making 'generic' dragons and such.

Following on from Pacific's point, which I completely agree with BTW, I fear that this means the end of an era for artwork at GW.

It's started with the covers to Codexes and Army a books already - anodyne, bland artwork, not showing anything that can't be purchased as a miniature.

If I have read the ruling correctly, I can't see how any art work such as the splash pages in the main rules can take place now (thinking of the Empire Menagerie, or the more esoteric imperial set pieces, or even the examples of other alien races), or books such as Xenology ever being done again.

It's time for the artwork to become purely marketing, rather than inspirational following this.

And that's not a good thing.

 Ouze wrote:

Hopefully we can discuss the ramifications of the suit here, as all of these things would be offtopic in the main thread. (If you want to talk about the filings and that alone, you should go there instead.)

Uh, your link goes back to this thread!

 spaceelf wrote:
I suspect that one of the consequences of the case will be for GW to include 'unique' elements in its models so it can better claim copyright. In a sci-fi setting this can kind of work, but in a Fantasy setting it leads to silly monsters such as their jabberslythe.

It will be sad to see GW stop making 'generic' dragons and such.

But the argument will be 'what is unique?'. Even in a sci fi setting, which GW should have more leverage on than their fantasy setting, what else can they add or what else will they want to add?

 Art Steventon wrote:
or books such as Xenology ever being done again.

Did anyone seriously see GW releasing stuff like that ever again anyway? I wouldn't blame that on Chapterhouse, come on.

 yakface wrote:
Uh, your link goes back to this thread!

Whoops, thanks.


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 Seaward wrote:
I don't think it will change anything, truth be told. While I don't think GW's unconcerned about the results over trademarks, I do think it's of less importance to them than the financial judgment. Their strategy for dealing with the third party market has always been, "Comply with this C&D, or we'll crush you." As long as CHS can't afford the damages and goes out of business, I think that's probably all GW was looking for. It doesn't really matter if you're in the right legally if you can't afford to prove it, and most other small studios are probably not going to be able to get a pro bono legal team for the many, many months another one of these would take.

"CHS fought us, was even mostly in the right, and they're still out of business. We've got another million to spend going after you, chumley, if you don't stop selling those power katanas," is a pretty powerful message to send to two guys working out of a basement somewhere.

Sadly I think this is pretty accurate. But we'll see.

What will happen to Merrert and Jones as they came across as out of touch and arrogant, will they be moved from where they are in GW? as I feel they are just as responsible for this GW failure in this court case as Moskin.