Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I do think GW could successfully defend their copyright and works, but it'd be a tough sell to a jury. Even ribs and skin textures aside, I'd think that a jury would see the T-1000/Xenomorph as a distinctive enough IP that the similarities between them and their GW not-at-all-counterparts would raise lots of eyebrows.
Plus, God help GW if the jury finds out/is told about GW's aggressive and uncompromising view on copyrights on it's own works, since this would probably partially sour the jury's views towards GW ("You're aggressive following copyrights of your material after being heavily "influenced" by these works?")

Does anyone know, would the attorney representing the Xenomorph/T-1000's side be able to successfully argue that certain details like skin texture and ribs may have been omitted or altered by the process of casting the miniatures? Basically arguing that those changes are insignificant because you can't include that fine of detail on that scale or the minaiture casting process requires certain body proportions/changes? (I'm asking legally, since I don't have the foggiest how that would be interpreted)

Perkustin wrote:Face it they both ripped off aliens but GW did it first.

So what's wrong with ripping off something another company hass already ripped off?

I guess I look at it this way: Zerglings are ripoffs of the OOP Hormagaunts, and the rest of the Zerg takes various bits and pieces of the Nid concept and models. However, Raveners are blatant ripoffs of hydralisks (aesthetically), among other strikingly similar models, so this is not a one-way steal-fest.

Imo, Blizzard stole/borrowed/was given the design of the Tyranids, in particular the muscular armored version seen on a very few Tyranids models (The hormagaunts again spring to mind), and developed that as the theme for the Zerg race. Fast forward a few years, and the Tyranids are updated, with a very distinct muscular, armored theme very similar to that of the Zerg.

For GW to have devopled an entire army's visual style off of one model, as oppossed to borrowing visual elements from one of the most popular computer games of the time, seems unlikely, especially given the heavy amount of visual elements Necrons took from an extremely popular movie starring a certain Austrian at about the same time. They took a lot of cues from pop culture for one codex's visual style, so why not do so for another codex?

I just see the 3rd ed Nids as being more influenced by GW's works as seen through the lense of the Zerg and Aliens instead of their original ideas. Iirc, the Dark Eldar, Space Marine, and IG armies haven't gone through anywhere near as severe of a visual change of style as the Tyranids have, and I attribute that abrupt change to the Zerg over their own internal and independent design.

I do agree though that Starcraft was original (for the most part) in the Terran (Great backstory, units were meh in orginiality) and Protoss (Honestly, I have never gotten the Eldar vibe from them. Maybe, maybe a bastard lovechild of Tau and Eldar, but not straight Eldar).