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H.B.M.C. wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:Wah?

H agreeing with me and not attacking me? I must be dreaming. Haha.

Bite me.






Is that better?

Weak effort but I'll give you a B+ for trying.

Kanluwen wrote:

warboss wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:LWD makes a product called 'Army Builder'. PP is attempting to use the name 'Army Builder'. LWD is protecting their trademark.

How is that a 7 page discussion?

sigh... it becomes 7 pages when someone posts something completely untrue like you just did and people take it as fact. how is PP attempting to use the name? LWD isn't even accusing them of "using" the name but you seem content to do so.

*facepalm*

Okay: People were referencing Forward Kommander as "the" Warmachine Army Builder.

Following?

That statement, is in fact, not true as it is *a* Warmachine army builder. It has no official connections to LWD. The capitals make all the difference, as does the context.

It's the same difference between a coke and the Coke.

I believe his point was that PP wasn't making software called Army Builder, which is what H.B.M.C. said. As far as I know, PP has no hand in making Forward Kommander.

While PP may have no hand in making Forward Kommander, they were asked to help correct the situation where some people were led to believe Forward Kommander is a LWD product.

Kanluwen wrote:While PP may have no hand in making Forward Kommander, they were asked to help correct the situation where some people were led to believe Forward Kommander is a LWD product.

Out of interest, and taking no sides in this debate at this time, do we know of anyone that downloaded Forward Kommander (or another such piece of software, including iBodger), expecting it to be by Lone Wolf Development? Or is this meant to be more of a preventative measure?

PP reaction made me laugh. Yes it is over the top, but it fixed the situation quickly. The anti-Privateer Press posters on this and other sites will continue to hate them, so no real difference there. Sometimes amputation is the way to go.

It is interesting to watch the bitterness from previous GW vs. PP threads leak into this one.

Fateweaver wrote:This thread looks to me like a bunch of WM fanbois are getting their panties in a bunch over someone trying to protect their IP and doing it nicely.

How is a C&D letter a dick move?

Do any of you have any idea what happens when you are found to be pirating movies for profit? You don't get a C&D. You get federal and local law enforcement agents knocking on your door. If you aren't home they find you and arrest you on the spot. You go away in handcuffs, your house is raided and everything that links you to movie piracy (computer, tapes, recorders) is taken from your home.

If you people think a friendly "please stop what you are doing" C&D is a dick move I could only imagine the tears you would shed if someone you knew got their home raided and arrested for movie/software piracy.

Yeesh. C&D is the NICE way of getting people to comply. The MPAA doesn't send C&D's. The FBI does not send a C&D if it gets a complaint about suspected movie/software piracy.

Yes, people using a word wrong in random conversation is exactly the same as stealing stuff. In fact, it's practically murder!

Fateweaver has no room to complain about the incorrect usage of words.

Dysartes wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:While PP may have no hand in making Forward Kommander, they were asked to help correct the situation where some people were led to believe Forward Kommander is a LWD product.

Out of interest, and taking no sides in this debate at this time, do we know of anyone that downloaded Forward Kommander (or another such piece of software, including iBodger), expecting it to be by Lone Wolf Development? Or is this meant to be more of a preventative measure?

It seems to have been more of a preventative measure. Like LWD said here:
If you don't aggressively defend a trademark, you CAN lose it.

lonewolfdevel wrote:

chaplaingrabthar wrote:GW did two "roster creation tools" Armies of the Imperium and Enemies of the Imperium. Unfortunately, unlike Army Builder(R) The datafiles were not updated and there was no real mechanism for upgrades.

Imperium is probably a trademark of Games Workshop. Army Builder is a registered trademark of Lone Wolf Development. They are used without permission in the above post, but this should not in any way be construed as a challenge to said trademarks.

Two FYIs....

1. Prior to AoI and EoI, GW also released their Interactive Army List product. It's life as a product was very similar to those of AoI and EoI. A splash with no sustained updates. It's possible that you are remembering that product instead of AoI and EoI.

You could well be right. I just remember them both being fairly useless compared to just sticking with a spreadsheet.

lonewolfdevel wrote:2. There is no need to include the "(R)" attribution with Army Builder in posts. All we want is that you use the term to reference the actual Lone Wolf Development product when using the term. I'm guessing you were having some fun with this, but there were no smileys, so I'm just making sure. :-)

You wound me, sir. How dare you suggest I was being anything less than 100% serious? That accusation is as baseless as it is completely accurate :-)

lonewolfdevel wrote:One interesting note regarding item #1 above. Neither time when GW released their own product did they ever contact Lone Wolf Development about our ongoing support of their products. And I don't believe they contacted the data file authors either. So, even when GW introduced a competing tool into the marketplace, they didn't see fit to close down Army Builder. Twice.

That is interesting and seems very atypical of the currently C&D happy GW.

I'm sure that means nothing moving forward, but I find it to be indicative that GW has viewed Army Builder as a boon to their products in the past. As for the future, who knows?

Styrofoam is to polystyrene as Army Builder is to army list creation programs.

I think that LWD is shutting the barn door after the cow got out. I don't think of iBodger as a Lone Wolf Developement tool. I think of it as an army builder. LWD has a long way to go if they're thinking that they will be able to change that line of thought.

RiTides wrote:Page 5...

lonewolfdevel wrote:

Gornall wrote:They specifically asked that all the references be removed/edited.

In any C&D situation that I'm aware of, the party issuing the C&D asks for the maximum. Then discussions ensue, and a compromise is reached, unless the recipient is doing something seriously egregious (like using your trademark in the name of their own product). Based on communications with PP on Friday, I thought we'd be doing that today (Monday). PP opted otherwise before any discussions were held.

Best post I've read in this thread, RiTides!

As a customer of both Army Builder and Privateer Press, I wish this could've been handled better. I've read the both the e-mail and the CD letter and I have to say that the e-mail from LWD came off as condescending. Saying you're open for discussion while your official and unofficial correspondence demands the maximum action is disingenuous backpeddling IMHO. You got what you asked for. Will this change my patronage? Nope. Though I never used Army Builder for my Warmachine lists (Tabletop Commander, I thought, was a better program to use), I'll continue to use Army Builder as long as I play 40K or until a better 40K "army list builder" comes along. This is just a thought, but I think that maybe an opportunity was wasted for discussing a possible licensing deal in which PP provides the data files for the Army Builder program. Imagine being able to download new files for new models/stats when the books go live. That might've been a better avenue to explore.

Vladigar wrote:
As a customer of both Army Builder and Privateer Press, I wish this could've been handled better. I've read the both the e-mail and the CD letter and I have to say that the e-mail from LWD came off as condescending. Saying you're open for discussion while your official and unofficial correspondence demands the maximum action is disingenuous backpeddling IMHO. You got what you asked for. Will this change my patronage? Nope. Though I never used Army Builder for my Warmachine lists (Tabletop Commander, I thought, was a better program to use), I'll continue to use Army Builder as long as I play 40K or until a better 40K "army list builder" comes along. This is just a thought, but I think that maybe an opportunity was wasted for discussing a possible licensing deal in which PP provides the data files for the Army Builder program. Imagine being able to download new files for new models/stats when the books go live. That might've been a better avenue to explore.

Licensing would imply LWD actually pay for some of the content that it facilitates the theft of. Not going to happen.

Unlike Heavy Metal Pro who were willing to operate within a license LWD has been, and remains, a parasite.

Kanluwen wrote:

Dysartes wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:While PP may have no hand in making Forward Kommander, they were asked to help correct the situation where some people were led to believe Forward Kommander is a LWD product.

Out of interest, and taking no sides in this debate at this time, do we know of anyone that downloaded Forward Kommander (or another such piece of software, including iBodger), expecting it to be by Lone Wolf Development? Or is this meant to be more of a preventative measure?

It seems to have been more of a preventative measure. Like LWD said here:
If you don't aggressively defend a trademark, you CAN lose it.

Not the question I was asking, Kanluwen. I am aware of, and accept, that if you do not defend a trademark it can lose it's status as a trademark. In this regard, contacting companies making similar organisational software and clarifying the situation regarding use of such trademarked terms is perfectly fine, though methods of doing so may vary in perceived politeness and eventual effectiveness.

My initial query was relating to the assertion that "some people were led to believe Forward Kommander is a LWD product." I was wondering if anyone had encountered such a scenario, when a potential LWD customer had downloaded a competing piece of software because when it was recommended to them as an "army builder", they took that to mean that it was a LWD program.

And I responded to your question with the answer "It seems to have been more of a preventative measure".

We can't really get any quality data on whether or not people downloaded it thinking it was a LWD product or not.
But yeah, I may have phrased the original statement a bit too solidly and should have had it as:
"they were asked to help correct the potential situation where some people may be led to believe that Forward Kommander is an official Lone Wolf Development addon for their Army Builder software"

lonewolfdevel wrote:
One interesting note regarding item #1 above. Neither time when GW released their own product did they ever contact Lone Wolf Development about our ongoing support of their products. And I don't believe they contacted the data file authors either. So, even when GW introduced a competing tool into the marketplace, they didn't see fit to close down Army Builder. Twice.

I'm sure that means nothing moving forward, but I find it to be indicative that GW has viewed Army Builder as a boon to their products in the past. As for the future, who knows?

Let's be perfectly clear here.

You sell a product that provides your customers with a mechanism to access trademarked and/or copyright protected unit names, point values, stats, and additional related information. Your product supplies all of this information to customers- it is the most salient feature of your software. You don't own any of the IP that your program supplies. Other companies do, such as GW or PP. You outrightly claimed in a previous post that this was a good thing, as it saves gamers money from buying books that they might regret. That it allows them to figuratively "test drive" an army before committing to buying it.

Now, here's the thing. There' nothing wrong with buying a book an deciding you don't like the content. Maybe annoying, maybe a little more expensive, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Your program circumvents this, and provides protected information; information that you have no legal authority or right to distribute or sell without approval or a license. As I said before, it's the entire selling feature of your software. And yet, you consistently deny that this is the case, a position that is so disingenuous it begs the question of "are you outrightly lying?", or "are you that blind to what you do, conceptually, as a business?".

Twice so far on this thread you have made the assertion that:

(in summary), "your business can't be violating another companies IP because these companies have never come at us (yet) and demanded that we desist in what we are doing. In fact, from my own personal perspective, we boost their sales, so we can't be violating their rights or doing wrong."

The ABSENCE of legal action against your company only shows us that the IP owners haven't devoted resources to closing you down yet. It doesn't disprove ANY of the points that I previously made, ie, that you sell software that allows people to access to IP that is not yours to sell and/or provide.

It's that hypocrisy that annoys many of the posters on these forums. You depend on and use IP that is not yours, then have the audacity to threaten these providers based on the notion that you don't like how separate 3rd parties speak about and refer to your products. It's, literally, flying rodent gak crazy.

The fact that you don't recognize this hypocrisy only adds more annoyance to the situation among many wargamers. I understand that nobody wants to say "Hey, I'm a hypocrite, but I have a family to feed and I need to sell this software". I also understand that you probably can't openly acknowledge your own hypocrisy, as it would give companies like GW and PP an opening to say to the judge:

"Your honor, even the guy at Lone Wolf knows and has previously acknowledged that he openly steals from us". I get it- you won't ever say it openly. But come on, you know what you do as a business. You know you don't pay for any of their content. Don't be a jerk and threaten the very people you steal from and for whom your livelihood is dependent upon with this product. And then, don't follow up by acting as if you are some sort of victim and/or have been treated poorly by the people you just threatened. It is ridiculous.

If Privateer Press decided to use your legal name, you would have a point. But your complaint is re: forum commentators and posters. On what basis can you dictate ANY terms on how third party people decide to refer to your product? Even if, and that's a real stretch... if you had a point, you still don't have any of the resources to stop all of the wargamers in the world that decide to post and converse from referring to your product a a generic noun, instead of as a pair of capitalized nouns. It's a losing case and cause from the very beginning. That you can'r/don't/refuse to recognize this boggles the mind.

Frankly, I find it very funny how PP decided to respond to you. The fact that you said you found it "severe" is odd, however. You threatened PP, and asked to have all references removed. You got exactly what you asked for- they removed all mention of you, forever. Like the old adage says, "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it."

I look forward to the possibility of the day when the newly legally aggressive GW decides to break Lone Wolf for its actions.

Guys - I realize this is (apparently?) a hot button issue, but lets leave the personal attacks out of it, OK?

Wow, I'm gonna have to repeat myself from an earlier post:

Why do people care so much about this?

If you don't like Lone Wolf or Army Builder, then don't buy it or use it. If you have a problem with either LW's C&D letter or PP's response to it, well....so what?

In what way, shape, or form does this issue impact any of our lives AT ALL?

If GW ever decides to pursue any legal action against LW, then that's their business. It still doesn't hurt or benefit any of us; hopefully, all of us are conversant enough with basic mathematics that we could go back to pen&paper lists.

Sometimes, when I see some of the overtly angry responses to this complete non-issue (from both sides), I'm forced to accept what some people say about the relative level of socialization exhibited by gamers....

dogma wrote:Fateweaver has no room to complain about the incorrect usage of words.

Ah yes, personal attacks from you Dogma. Why am I not surprised? Go on with your bad liberal college educated self. Must make you feel warm and fuzzy to attack people on a nerd forum. Don't you have something you should be doing with the education mom and dad paid for instead of sitting on dakka all day?

efarrer wrote:

Vladigar wrote:Unlike Heavy Metal Pro who were willing to operate within a license LWD has been, and remains, a parasite.

I think calling them a 'parasite' is a bit of a stretch. A symbiotic relationship at worse, as both parties derive value from it. the only party Army Builder arguably 'takes advantage of' is the data file creators, and they do so willingly. If Army Builder was cross platform, I'd probably try to make an 'official' datafile release for some games I'm involved with.

Alpharius wrote:Guys - I realize this is (apparently?) a hot button issue, but lets leave the personal attacks out of it, OK?

*taps the sign*

Quoting for emphasis. Keep it above the belt.

Or aimed at Privateer.

Allrighty then, at 8 pages its getting flamy and I think everything that needs to be said has been said no?