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YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
It's no different than if Disney walks up to someone selling knock off stuffed mickey mouses at the state fair.

Which is 100% bs too, that character was created 90 years ago, everyone involved in its creation is dead, and he should 100% be public domain now.
Characters should NEVER be owned by companies. Should always be owned by the authors/creators.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
It's no different than if Disney walks up to someone selling knock off stuffed mickey mouses at the state fair.

Which is 100% bs too, that character was created 90 years ago, everyone involved in its creation is dead, and he should 100% be public domain now.
Characters should NEVER be owned by companies. Should always be owned by the authors/creators.

Disney have lobbied for years to get the public domain thing extended and have done so successfully. Oddly though, Steamboat Willie will enter the public domain in 2024(iirc) yet we've not heard a peep from Disney or the US congress about extending it.

The barbarian is a common domain trope, see the one in Heroquest or Warhammer Quest, or anything from a range of stuff done for DnD and the like.

But if the name Conan is owned, you’re on thin ice using it. The $24K award seems like nonsense to me, how much did the guy actually make off this miniature??

The issue is that big companies like Disney contantly lobby to stretch out their rights ever further so they can come cynically wring money out of things long after all those involved are dead. After nearly 100 years they should be creating something new not litigating people making miniatures of stuff they ‘own’.

Good to know that spaniards count as the "west" and are thus exempt from ip theft charges in the public eye, in stark contrast to the outrage we see when the russians or chinese do it.

May I ask, which category are slovenians in? Asking for a friend.

I think nobody disputes that he ripped off something, it's just not what he got sued over, I think.

This is nothing to do with Disney.

The rights to gaming materials using the Howard IP is Conan Properties International LLC, which is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive, the same company who bought out White Wolf, Battletech and Shadowrun.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
This is nothing to do with Disney.

The rights to gaming materials using the Howard IP is Conan Properties International LLC, which is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive, the same company who bought out White Wolf, Battletech and Shadowrun.

Yes, I feel I should clarify as I was the one that brought up Disney.

There's a hell of a lot of "not" minis that have flown under the radar (even from Conan too) and all of a sudden Marvel (so by extension Disney) re-acquired the rights to Conan comics and maybe by coincidence the hammer starts to come down on Conan stuff. It was pure speculation on my part given their past behavior in this field.

Warlord did the same to all of the 3rd party "not" Doctor Who minis out there when they got the license from the BBC, though they appeared to be less gung-ho about it.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
This is nothing to do with Disney.

The rights to gaming materials using the Howard IP is Conan Properties International LLC, which is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive, the same company who bought out White Wolf, Battletech and Shadowrun.

The various FASA intellectual properties are spread out over quite a few companies and sometimes it seems quite convoluted as to who has what. Topps, by acquiring WizKids in 2003 has the rights to the BattleTech and Shadowrun pencil and paper games with those rights licensed to Catalyst Game Labs.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Good to know that spaniards count as the "west" and are thus exempt from ip theft charges in the public eye, in stark contrast to the outrage we see when the russians or chinese do it.

May I ask, which category are slovenians in? Asking for a friend.

Would you like us to move those windmills closer for you, as to aid in the tilting?

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Lets also not forget that there are several companies currently paying the Howard Estate for rights to make Conan figures and they all probably have clauses in the contracts where the estate could probably be penalized for not protecting it's IP.

There are lots of Not Conan stuff out there and they don't get into trouble even though they all base themselves off of the same artwork. The issue I'm sure got this guy into trouble is, and you can see it in the KS URL, he used the name Robert E Howard in the name of his KS project as well as lots of the character names. But by using Howard's name it make it look like an official licenses and I don't blame them for going after him.

This is the key to why he got wacked. If he had call it "Heroes of Fantasy Pulp Stories" or something else generic, he wouldn't have been touched. There have been plenty of great unofficial Conan figs, but they all go by names like "Northern Barbarian" and such. By calling out an Howard and Conan explicitly, he opened himself up.

I agree the copyright system is messed up where the Mouse has essentially made copyrights eternal, but it's the system we have to work with.

A few points here (without getting into a discussion about what IP laws should be and sticking to just discussion about what IP laws presently are):

It's probably worth noting the original filed Complaint and the actual Court Ruling

The Complaint boils down to:
1) Sanchez utilized the Trademarks associated with Conan + other REH properties (i.e., the actual names) without authorization to market his miniatures.
2) Sanchez essentially created replicas/derivative works based on copyrights that the plaintiffs had from the 70's and 80's (specifically one of the Conan books that was published in 1970 and the Arnold movie from the 80s). So the claim here is that they have copyrights based on the Conan properties generated from the 70's and 80s (as non-limiting examples) and Sanchez did not have permission to create and sell derivative works. They point to the fact that Sanchez himself posted side-by-side pictures showing him explicitly attempting to replicate those particular works.

The Ruling boils down to:
1) Sanchez never showed up to defend his case, so he was defaulted.
2) The Judge states that the Plaintiffs had plausible enough allegation that Sanchez' stuff was similar enough to IP owned by them (namely the body of work that has since been copyrighted).
3) Defaulting (which Sanchez did by not showing up) is taken as an admission of liability.


So as far as this Complaint and Ruling go: the Court just clarified the procedures needed for a plaintiff to have sufficient standing to file for damages and that at least at the initial, Sanchez plausibly infringed the IP and the Trademark of the Plaintiffs. That Sanchez failed to show up is partly the reason why the ruling defaulted to Sanchez being found liable.

The discussion with respect to the Judge's ruling about copyright of characters is mostly stating that the body of works describing the various characters (including written works) help define the metes and bounds of what constitutes the character and that the Plaintiff clearly and sufficiently stated what works/characters they felt Sanchez was infringing. Of particular note, one of the footnotes with respect to Dark Agnes relies on the written works that defines her physical characteristics, her name, and personality traits/habits/background as being all factors of delineating/defining the character covered under IP.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
This is nothing to do with Disney.

Disney is the reason why IP are protected for so long though, and a perfect example of how capitalism perverted IP rules.
(Just in case: an author making money out of his own work is NOT capitalism. It's someone getting money for their work. The worker (the artist) owns the means of production (his brain, likely a computer or some other relatively cheap tools too. A big company like Disney making money out of some IP (let's say, Spiderman). The owner of the company is making money not from their work, but from the fact they own Spiderman. The actual workers (the artists and authors making the Spiderman comics, for instance) do not own the characters, or the final result of their work.)

1) Sanchez never showed up to defend his case, so he was defaulted.

The guy probably didn't have the money.

This is really unfortunate for the sculptor - but I feel like he knew the risks initially when he went through with it

Yeah, he could have just called it a barbarian instead of specifically using Frank Franzettis art and Robert E Howards name to market it, then he'd have likely been absolutely fine, like the piles of 'not' whatever manufacturers.
The screenshot of what he posted pretty much sinks him.
If he'd done a literary inspired Conan from the books he'd have probably been ok or more ok, but he's specifically based it on the 1970s art and told everybody that.
And if you don't turn up to court you tend to lose.