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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?