TheAuldGrump wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
so, they sell their stuff as GW conversion products, get sued, they cry lack of evidence? this gak is going to make GW more paranoid, only hurting us in the long run

My faith in human nature is restored.

Just so you know... it isn't illegal to make conversion parts. Period. End. Stop.

That is how you get things like spinning rims for your cars and fancy scopes for your rifles.

It isn't against the law.

So, yes, there was a lack of evidence that doing something that is legal is against the law - in much the same way that there is a lack of evidence that water is dry at 38 degrees and one A of pressure.

Car companies have taken folks to court over that.

And lost.

The Auld Grump

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
GW is very inward looking, it's no surprise that people joining the company in more recent years have little to no experience of anything beyond GW and drink the kool aid. That doesn't excuse people like Alan Merrit who have been there a long time, but it's easy to see why people coming later but into the idea that GW did everything themselves.

Spoiler:

'GW won their injunction against Bantam/Transworld's Dark Future books, which will now presumably be withdrawn. British justice and the English sense of fair play triumph again!' – writes Brian Stableford, possibly in tones of mild sarcasm.

As Ansible readers know (A64-65), this lawsuit arose because Games Workshop had a game called Dark Future™ and had published spin-off Dark Future books (mostly by Kim 'Jack Yeovil' Newman) before apparently discontinuing the game and their own book venture. Their new co-publishing project with Boxtree starts this month, with no DF books in the launch and none announced for later. (But on an Xmas card Ian Watson writes: 'The rest of Kim's and Brian's [Stableford's] books are due subsequently.') Meanwhile Transworld have been publishing a series of young-adult books with the overall title Dark Future, by Laurence James, which have incidentally sold a great deal better than the GW titles. GW objected and the lawsuit was on.

The law is pretty bloody murky. There is no copyright in titles; anyone can call their new space opera War and Peace. (Evelyn Waugh's title Men at Arms is being recycled by Terry Pratchett in a Discworld novel even now under construction.) Nevertheless Laurence James apparently searched Whitaker's Books in Print (plus the entire Essex Library database) to check that Dark Future wasn't currently in use. No mention: it seems GW had got bored with registering books and took to making up their own ISBN numbers instead. What about trademark infringement? British trademark law applies to a distinctive style or logo: anyone can write 'IBM' but use of the IBM logo is strictly controlled. The GW and Transworld Dark Future books didn't look at all alike. Transworld (said to have been very supportive of their author) had encouraging affidavits from the Society of Authors, the Publishers' Association and major authors. 'Everyone in the book trade,' said my spy, 'realized the potential gravity of this case and absolutely everyone rallied around from all quarters.' It was expected throughout the publishing industry that GW's injunction would fail.

It succeeded, and early in December Transworld were duly landed with costs of £60,000 plus instructions to get their Dark Future books out of the shops in one week.

All this was an interlocutory hearing; an appeal is expected shortly, while the trial proper may be a year off. The charges against Transworld were trademark infringement and 'passing off'. The Deputy Judge declined to rule on the latter, so the law remains unclarified. The judgement on trademark infringement appeared to follow the line that (a) the GW Dark Future books all have clear ™ or ® marks on the cover near the words Dark Future (but they don't; only the GW logo on the back has a ™ mark – and of the three Yeovil DF books here, two refer on the copyright page only to the trademarked status of Warhammer, another game altogether); (b) if GW had brought out a magazine called Dark Future™, and if Transworld had published its own Dark Future magazine, that would have been an infringement owing to the technicalities of 'A' and 'B' trademarks, of which one applies to mags and the other doesn't (er, yes, but what have magazines got to do with it?); (c) for practical purposes there is no difference between a numbered series of books and a magazine or periodical (sickening sound of dropped jaws across the entire publishing industry); (d) there was an infringement: injunction granted.

It had earlier emerged that one cannot use as a trademark, on a book, 'any descriptive phrase'. Happily for GW but to the slight surprise of English grammarians, Dark Future was ruled not to be a descriptive phrase.

Ansible does not take sides, perish the thought, and lots of sf authors are grateful to GW for generous book advances. But the Transworld lot are bitter about such reputed facts as that GW went into court with a sympathy-winning attitude of 'poor little firm being crushed by big firm ... not our fault ... always wanted a compromise' after having initially stormed on Transworld with legal guns blazing and DEMANDED the withdrawal and destruction of all copies, no deals, no compromise; that GW gave sworn evidence that the Boxtree launch wasn't yet going ahead (i.e. was in peril from this wicked passing-off), only to be shown as fibbing thanks to contradictory evidence from the great and good Rog Peyton; above all, that if only GW had acted professionally and registered their bloody titles in the first place this whole nonsense would never have arisen.

Before the hearing a GW author had remarked, optimistically, that if GW/Boxtree were to win on a platform of claimed lost sales of Dark Future books, they might feel honour-bound to publish some of the DF epics left in limbo ever since the game was (allegedly) scrapped. We shall see....

They've been doing this for years. Most people think it started with the C&Ds sent out to websites some years ago. But GW has been doing this for decades. See in the spoiler above, they shut down an entirely unrelated book range for using the title 'dark future' even though they had discontinued the game and ceased publishing. They didn't publish any of the books that the other line was supposedly preventing either. They just barged in, no compromises and demanded they all be destroyed. Sound familiar? GW don't do compromise or communication and only accept destroying as much as they can of the other party. It's great that CHS have them a bloody nose, hopefully they will bleed and bleed from it for some time.

 cygnnus wrote:

Beyond that case (that I was not aware of previously), does anyone remember GW's legal maneuverings against RAFM Miniatures' "Reaction Marines" line back in the mid-to-late(?) 1990's? I know all the specific details, but RAFM produced a line of SF humans and orcs. Some in power armor, some in heavier suits. What my FLGS owner said (and this was largely pre-internet, so I didn't have any other sources of info) was that GW claimed that the heavier armor was "stolen" from the Tactical Dreadnought Armor concept. Never mind that there really were no stylistic similarities. I don't know if it ever went to court, but I recall that RAFM quickly backed down (or at least my FLGS couldn't get the models anymore). To be fair, I never heard GW's "side" of that story, but that was my own first experience with GW's attempts to force any competitors out of the market and soured me on GW for a number of years...

Valete,

JohnS

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
GW is very inward looking, it's no surprise that people joining the company in more recent years have little to no experience of anything beyond GW and drink the kool aid. That doesn't excuse people like Alan Merrit who have been there a long time, but it's easy to see why people coming later but into the idea that GW did everything themselves.

Spoiler:

'GW won their injunction against Bantam/Transworld's Dark Future books, which will now presumably be withdrawn. British justice and the English sense of fair play triumph again!' – writes Brian Stableford, possibly in tones of mild sarcasm.

As Ansible readers know (A64-65), this lawsuit arose because Games Workshop had a game called Dark Future™ and had published spin-off Dark Future books (mostly by Kim 'Jack Yeovil' Newman) before apparently discontinuing the game and their own book venture. Their new co-publishing project with Boxtree starts this month, with no DF books in the launch and none announced for later. (But on an Xmas card Ian Watson writes: 'The rest of Kim's and Brian's [Stableford's] books are due subsequently.') Meanwhile Transworld have been publishing a series of young-adult books with the overall title Dark Future, by Laurence James, which have incidentally sold a great deal better than the GW titles. GW objected and the lawsuit was on.

The law is pretty bloody murky. There is no copyright in titles; anyone can call their new space opera War and Peace. (Evelyn Waugh's title Men at Arms is being recycled by Terry Pratchett in a Discworld novel even now under construction.) Nevertheless Laurence James apparently searched Whitaker's Books in Print (plus the entire Essex Library database) to check that Dark Future wasn't currently in use. No mention: it seems GW had got bored with registering books and took to making up their own ISBN numbers instead. What about trademark infringement? British trademark law applies to a distinctive style or logo: anyone can write 'IBM' but use of the IBM logo is strictly controlled. The GW and Transworld Dark Future books didn't look at all alike. Transworld (said to have been very supportive of their author) had encouraging affidavits from the Society of Authors, the Publishers' Association and major authors. 'Everyone in the book trade,' said my spy, 'realized the potential gravity of this case and absolutely everyone rallied around from all quarters.' It was expected throughout the publishing industry that GW's injunction would fail.

It succeeded, and early in December Transworld were duly landed with costs of £60,000 plus instructions to get their Dark Future books out of the shops in one week.

All this was an interlocutory hearing; an appeal is expected shortly, while the trial proper may be a year off. The charges against Transworld were trademark infringement and 'passing off'. The Deputy Judge declined to rule on the latter, so the law remains unclarified. The judgement on trademark infringement appeared to follow the line that (a) the GW Dark Future books all have clear ™ or ® marks on the cover near the words Dark Future (but they don't; only the GW logo on the back has a ™ mark – and of the three Yeovil DF books here, two refer on the copyright page only to the trademarked status of Warhammer, another game altogether); (b) if GW had brought out a magazine called Dark Future™, and if Transworld had published its own Dark Future magazine, that would have been an infringement owing to the technicalities of 'A' and 'B' trademarks, of which one applies to mags and the other doesn't (er, yes, but what have magazines got to do with it?); (c) for practical purposes there is no difference between a numbered series of books and a magazine or periodical (sickening sound of dropped jaws across the entire publishing industry); (d) there was an infringement: injunction granted.

It had earlier emerged that one cannot use as a trademark, on a book, 'any descriptive phrase'. Happily for GW but to the slight surprise of English grammarians, Dark Future was ruled not to be a descriptive phrase.

Ansible does not take sides, perish the thought, and lots of sf authors are grateful to GW for generous book advances. But the Transworld lot are bitter about such reputed facts as that GW went into court with a sympathy-winning attitude of 'poor little firm being crushed by big firm ... not our fault ... always wanted a compromise' after having initially stormed on Transworld with legal guns blazing and DEMANDED the withdrawal and destruction of all copies, no deals, no compromise; that GW gave sworn evidence that the Boxtree launch wasn't yet going ahead (i.e. was in peril from this wicked passing-off), only to be shown as fibbing thanks to contradictory evidence from the great and good Rog Peyton; above all, that if only GW had acted professionally and registered their bloody titles in the first place this whole nonsense would never have arisen.

Before the hearing a GW author had remarked, optimistically, that if GW/Boxtree were to win on a platform of claimed lost sales of Dark Future books, they might feel honour-bound to publish some of the DF epics left in limbo ever since the game was (allegedly) scrapped. We shall see....

They've been doing this for years. Most people think it started with the C&Ds sent out to websites some years ago. But GW has been doing this for decades. See in the spoiler above, they shut down an entirely unrelated book range for using the title 'dark future' even though they had discontinued the game and ceased publishing. They didn't publish any of the books that the other line was supposedly preventing either. They just barged in, no compromises and demanded they all be destroyed. Sound familiar? GW don't do compromise or communication and only accept destroying as much as they can of the other party. It's great that CHS have them a bloody nose, hopefully they will bleed and bleed from it for some time.

 granander wrote:
Weeble1000:
You sound like a lawyer, what is your job?

EDIT: That sounded rude, I am curious since I have studied law here in Sweden.

 Pacific wrote:


This seems absolutely nonsensical to me.

Can someone, please, explain to me what GW had to gain by stopping that other line of books being released, especially as it was something so dated (and now, obscure) from their own past? How could the new release have possibly hurt GW, either in terms of their company image, marketing or monetarily?

 Pacific wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
GW is very inward looking, it's no surprise that people joining the company in more recent years have little to no experience of anything beyond GW and drink the kool aid. That doesn't excuse people like Alan Merrit who have been there a long time, but it's easy to see why people coming later but into the idea that GW did everything themselves.

Spoiler:

'GW won their injunction against Bantam/Transworld's Dark Future books, which will now presumably be withdrawn. British justice and the English sense of fair play triumph again!' – writes Brian Stableford, possibly in tones of mild sarcasm.

As Ansible readers know (A64-65), this lawsuit arose because Games Workshop had a game called Dark Future™ and had published spin-off Dark Future books (mostly by Kim 'Jack Yeovil' Newman) before apparently discontinuing the game and their own book venture. Their new co-publishing project with Boxtree starts this month, with no DF books in the launch and none announced for later. (But on an Xmas card Ian Watson writes: 'The rest of Kim's and Brian's [Stableford's] books are due subsequently.') Meanwhile Transworld have been publishing a series of young-adult books with the overall title Dark Future, by Laurence James, which have incidentally sold a great deal better than the GW titles. GW objected and the lawsuit was on.

The law is pretty bloody murky. There is no copyright in titles; anyone can call their new space opera War and Peace. (Evelyn Waugh's title Men at Arms is being recycled by Terry Pratchett in a Discworld novel even now under construction.) Nevertheless Laurence James apparently searched Whitaker's Books in Print (plus the entire Essex Library database) to check that Dark Future wasn't currently in use. No mention: it seems GW had got bored with registering books and took to making up their own ISBN numbers instead. What about trademark infringement? British trademark law applies to a distinctive style or logo: anyone can write 'IBM' but use of the IBM logo is strictly controlled. The GW and Transworld Dark Future books didn't look at all alike. Transworld (said to have been very supportive of their author) had encouraging affidavits from the Society of Authors, the Publishers' Association and major authors. 'Everyone in the book trade,' said my spy, 'realized the potential gravity of this case and absolutely everyone rallied around from all quarters.' It was expected throughout the publishing industry that GW's injunction would fail.

It succeeded, and early in December Transworld were duly landed with costs of £60,000 plus instructions to get their Dark Future books out of the shops in one week.

All this was an interlocutory hearing; an appeal is expected shortly, while the trial proper may be a year off. The charges against Transworld were trademark infringement and 'passing off'. The Deputy Judge declined to rule on the latter, so the law remains unclarified. The judgement on trademark infringement appeared to follow the line that (a) the GW Dark Future books all have clear ™ or ® marks on the cover near the words Dark Future (but they don't; only the GW logo on the back has a ™ mark – and of the three Yeovil DF books here, two refer on the copyright page only to the trademarked status of Warhammer, another game altogether); (b) if GW had brought out a magazine called Dark Future™, and if Transworld had published its own Dark Future magazine, that would have been an infringement owing to the technicalities of 'A' and 'B' trademarks, of which one applies to mags and the other doesn't (er, yes, but what have magazines got to do with it?); (c) for practical purposes there is no difference between a numbered series of books and a magazine or periodical (sickening sound of dropped jaws across the entire publishing industry); (d) there was an infringement: injunction granted.

It had earlier emerged that one cannot use as a trademark, on a book, 'any descriptive phrase'. Happily for GW but to the slight surprise of English grammarians, Dark Future was ruled not to be a descriptive phrase.

Ansible does not take sides, perish the thought, and lots of sf authors are grateful to GW for generous book advances. But the Transworld lot are bitter about such reputed facts as that GW went into court with a sympathy-winning attitude of 'poor little firm being crushed by big firm ... not our fault ... always wanted a compromise' after having initially stormed on Transworld with legal guns blazing and DEMANDED the withdrawal and destruction of all copies, no deals, no compromise; that GW gave sworn evidence that the Boxtree launch wasn't yet going ahead (i.e. was in peril from this wicked passing-off), only to be shown as fibbing thanks to contradictory evidence from the great and good Rog Peyton; above all, that if only GW had acted professionally and registered their bloody titles in the first place this whole nonsense would never have arisen.

Before the hearing a GW author had remarked, optimistically, that if GW/Boxtree were to win on a platform of claimed lost sales of Dark Future books, they might feel honour-bound to publish some of the DF epics left in limbo ever since the game was (allegedly) scrapped. We shall see....

They've been doing this for years. Most people think it started with the C&Ds sent out to websites some years ago. But GW has been doing this for decades. See in the spoiler above, they shut down an entirely unrelated book range for using the title 'dark future' even though they had discontinued the game and ceased publishing. They didn't publish any of the books that the other line was supposedly preventing either. They just barged in, no compromises and demanded they all be destroyed. Sound familiar? GW don't do compromise or communication and only accept destroying as much as they can of the other party. It's great that CHS have them a bloody nose, hopefully they will bleed and bleed from it for some time.

This seems absolutely nonsensical to me.

Can someone, please, explain to me what GW had to gain by stopping that other line of books being released, especially as it was something so dated (and now, obscure) from their own past? How could the new release have possibly hurt GW, either in terms of their company image, marketing or monetarily?

 slowthar wrote:

 Pacific wrote:


This seems absolutely nonsensical to me.

Can someone, please, explain to me what GW had to gain by stopping that other line of books being released, especially as it was something so dated (and now, obscure) from their own past? How could the new release have possibly hurt GW, either in terms of their company image, marketing or monetarily?

The gist of it is that trademarks have to be defended, and any allowed violations of that trademark weaken it. If you don't consistently enforce your claim to a trademark and allow others to use it you can legally lose that trademark.

Or something to that effect. I'm certainly not a lawyer, I've just seen this type of behavior in other industries. It is somewhat silly, and highly questionable, but there is a rationale behind it.

weeble1000 wrote:
Most of my work is in patent litigation, some in trademarks,

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

http://www.bsfa.co.uk/www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp%3FarticleID=42.html

David Pringle wrote:I think it was largely to do with poor marketing, too-high pricing and insufficiently commercial covers. But behind it all, mainly, was the fact that GW just didn't know what they were doing when it came to marketing books.

 Baragash wrote:
I loved this quote from 1990....

David Pringle wrote:I think it was largely to do with poor marketing, too-high pricing and insufficiently commercial covers. But behind it all, mainly, was the fact that GW just didn't know what they were doing when it came to marketing books.

weeble1000 wrote:

Spoiler:

 slowthar wrote:

 Pacific wrote:


This seems absolutely nonsensical to me.

Can someone, please, explain to me what GW had to gain by stopping that other line of books being released, especially as it was something so dated (and now, obscure) from their own past? How could the new release have possibly hurt GW, either in terms of their company image, marketing or monetarily?

The gist of it is that trademarks have to be defended, and any allowed violations of that trademark weaken it. If you don't consistently enforce your claim to a trademark and allow others to use it you can legally lose that trademark.

Or something to that effect. I'm certainly not a lawyer, I've just seen this type of behavior in other industries. It is somewhat silly, and highly questionable, but there is a rationale behind it.

That's a common misconception. And it in no way excuses or justifies GW's behavior. It is up there with the top 5 copyright and trademark misconceptions that I have repeatedly corrected in this thread.