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Smellingsalts wrote:
I have been following this thread and others regarding the battle between LOS and SD. I don't really know anything about either company other than what is posted on forums and kickstarter.. I must say, I am really happy SD is going to produce Confrontation again. The miniatures are some of the best in the industry and the game was unique. I can see much of the influence of Confrontation in the LoS figures and logo. I don't know if it is enough to win an IP infringement battle, but I do know in some of these cases, if you don't defend your IP when it is infringed, it can hurt your case later. I don't really get the level of anger directed at SD and their Confrontation kickstarter. They had an earlybird bonus, stretch goals, and a great initial offering, yet they are criticized for running a terrible kickstarter. I didn't experience that. A lot of the anger at the Confrontation kickstarter had to do with speculation that backers money would be used to fight the lawsuit, but that is just pure speculation as is the idea that they won't deliver. If I were going to be angry, not that I am but, I think I would place more of the blame on LoS. After all, in their update to backers they come right out and say that SD had asked them to pay for something (presumably IP rights), and when refusals were made SD told them they would get their kickstarter shut down for IP infringement, yet LoS went ahead and did it anyway knowing this was going to happen. This should have all been hammered out before they started a kickstarter campaign. Just my two cents.

Or, alternatively, SD made entirely unreasonable demands in the hope that LoS would cave in, and LoS assumed that since the demands were unreasonable SD must have been bluffing and pushed on. Considering we don't actually know what demands and claims SD have made yet, that's just as likely as your scenario.

@Smellingsalts The anger during the Confrontation Kickstarter has absolutely nothing to do with LoS. It only came to light after the Confrontation KS ended that they had proceeded with an IP infringement against LoS.

The anger during the Kickstarter was due to the lack of production miniatures and no clear explanation as to how they were going to manufacture the minis. That´s why people left the Kickstarter in their droves. I believe that if people knew about the LoS "Lawsuit" during the Confrontation Kickstarter even more would have left..

This in no way offers an opinion on which party is in the right/wrong in this situation. I suppose that LoS went ahead with the Kickstater because they felt that they would win an IP battle..... maybe

Smellingsalts wrote:
I have been following this thread and others regarding the battle between LOS and SD. I don't really know anything about either company other than what is posted on forums and kickstarter.. I must say, I am really happy SD is going to produce Confrontation again. The miniatures are some of the best in the industry and the game was unique. I can see much of the influence of Confrontation in the LoS figures and logo. I don't know if it is enough to win an IP infringement battle, but I do know in some of these cases, if you don't defend your IP when it is infringed, it can hurt your case later. I don't really get the level of anger directed at SD and their Confrontation kickstarter. They had an earlybird bonus, stretch goals, and a great initial offering, yet they are criticized for running a terrible kickstarter. I didn't experience that. A lot of the anger at the Confrontation kickstarter had to do with speculation that backers money would be used to fight the lawsuit, but that is just pure speculation as is the idea that they won't deliver. If I were going to be angry, not that I am but, I think I would place more of the blame on LoS. After all, in their update to backers they come right out and say that SD had asked them to pay for something (presumably IP rights), and when refusals were made SD told them they would get their kickstarter shut down for IP infringement, yet LoS went ahead and did it anyway knowing this was going to happen. This should have all been hammered out before they started a kickstarter campaign. Just my two cents.

When the campaign was live there wasnt any talk of SD money being used on a lawsuit, there was no talk of a lawsuit until the day after the campaign finished when SD had a jealous hissy fit and issued a C&D on LOS project which doesnt deserve it, their complaint is to do with them recasting in Ukraine and as far as im aware is LOS took the Confrontation minis down from their website before SD ran their KS and on LOS KS page there are no identical copies, KS is only concerned about their platform and if they find that LOS have nothing infringing on their page(which seems to be the concise thoughts across various internet forums) KS will let LOS continue with their KS, KS dont care what companies do outside of their platform, also if you are not infringing on someones IP why should you pay IP rights when you dont need them!

Also are you new to KS as that was the worst ran campaign in KS history, its made history as the only campaign to lose 250,000 Euros(the price of a brand new Lambo/house/yacht) while the creators sat around smiling saying "all is fine", i really hope you and others get your stuff but its not looking good for you, any expert in the industry is saying that and yes i know quite a few games company owners and creators who all have dealt with china and ive spoke to them at lengths about SDs campaign, food for thought once the campaign is over KS takes 10% and there are always dropped pledges which is normally around 3% of funds with a good campaign but SD was far from that so im expecting the dropped pledges to be a lot higher +-10% so the raised sum of 403,000 Euros becomes 353,000 Euros at best case and 320,000 Euros or less at worse case scenario

*edit, if it comes across as arsey its not meant to, i wrote this 5mins after getting up and before coffee!

So, I remember a while back (2 or 3 years) there was talk about how you can’t sell an existing product on Kickstarter. So is there any chance that even if they come through ok vs the IP claim that they may get shut for basically selling product that exists and is being sold on their and Cadwallon’s site? They are offering new stuff too but the base pledges are all existing product. I don’t know if this is still a rule or an enforced rule or not.

I actually dropped out the day before (as I decided to go into a different Kickstarter) but do not blame LoS for this fiasco. I hope they come through this ok.

The only time KS seems to bother with the 'existing stuff' rule seems to be projects which are 'buy a container of something generally from china and then run a KS to supply it' so I doubt it

I think the bigger question is whether KS ever lets projects go on while there is a claim that has not been through a court process and found to be invalid (as opposed to KS considering 'evidence' themselves as that seems a recipie for getting involved if the claim later comes to court which KS won't want to do)

 Smokestack wrote:
So, I remember a while back (2 or 3 years) there was talk about how you can’t sell an existing product on Kickstarter. So is there any chance that even if they come through ok vs the IP claim that they may get shut for basically selling product that exists and is being sold on their and Cadwallon’s site? They are offering new stuff too but the base pledges are all existing product. I don’t know if this is still a rule or an enforced rule or not.

There has been quite a few re-prints of boardgames in the last few years and in their case they normally have a v.2 rules or other small component upgrades to bypass the "existing product" clause and in LOS case they are bundling existing minis into a full game using "combat cards", i remember there was a dice KS which was basically importing a container then selling on KS and like it was previously said that is against KS "existing product" clause and was closed down

Gleesman wrote:Playing Devil´s advocate here. I have looked through the Signum main website and picked out a few examples of models which I feel are (too) close copies of Confrontation art.

The issue here is that the IP infringement seems to have been taken out against the Kickstarter campaign and none of these models which resemble Confrontation artwork form part of the KS......

So maybe Stellar Consulting have shot themselves in the foot a bit ??

grefven wrote:There is absolutely no way that anyone can claim that these figures above are a theft of the Confrontation-IP, unless there are specific concept arts that show this exact design.

The top one is more close to Overwatch's McCree:

Spoiler:

The other ones are very standard fantasy characters, imo.

Hello guys,

First time posting here and, before anything I would like to state that I am a Confrontation fan and thus I back Stellar Licensing's DMCA

That said, I try to be the most unbiaised I can be...

So those 3 minis you are quoting indeed are rip off from Rackham's comcepts:





While they are not part of LoS's Kickstarter, Signum did answerd many times that minis that are not part of it "may" receive profile cards in the future...

Anyway, there are some minis in the KS that do look like Confrontation models, the most blatant one being Umbra:

which really looks like a "repurgateur du temple" from COnfrontation and the boardgame Hybrid


That was my 2 cents, thank you...

I'll just add to SlowMo...

* Stellar / Sans-Detour is in France, and Signum / Cadwallon is in Russia (?). France, of course, is in the EU. Stellar has the rights to Confrontation, but we haven't been told what jurisdiction they have. They can file for the rights in France, they can file for them in the EU, but neither automagically means they have the rights everywhere in the world. If anyone is familiar with how IP disputes are resolved internationally, feel free to post. I would think that Stellar, if they show infringement by Signum, would be able to prevent import of LoS product into the EU, but not other countries unless they've registered trademarks et al. in other countries -- and enforced them, if challenged.

* In the US, IP cases have been historically inconsistent. While internet arguments tend to laser-focus on only one or two aspects of an IP issue, US judges will evaluate an IP dispute on the whole. *Mulitple* pieces of art and background similarities are taken into account during this evaluation.

* In the US, while internet arguments regularly assume the two parties go to court, this rarely happens. If Signum changes the background and art of their miniatures and game system, that should make it more difficult for Stellar to claim infringement. Pretty obviously, the LoS production hasn't started yet, making this option less costly than if LoS was on retail shelves.

That said, I try to be the most unbiaised I can be...

So those 3 minis you are quoting indeed are rip off from Rackham's comcepts:

"unbiased" "rip off"

Very funny.

Because yeah, no one ever did a guy with a rifle over his shoulder, it *must* be those meanies over at Signum stealing from Scam-Detours.

SlowMo is a member of the Conf'fédération, that is clearly pro-SD and one of the fanboys defending blindly SD's kickstarter for the sake of seeing Confrontation back on the scene. So yeah, he tries to be as unbiased as he can.

That said, the girl with a gunblade could be seen as something else with a different color scheme and let's just say that gunblades aren't especially Rackham's innovation. For example, Final Fantasy went that path some years ago. So maybe it's Rackham that was stealing the idea from Square Enix, after all.



For the cards, to be complete, they were concepts that never led to miniatures at the time Rackham was alive. It was basically alternative profiles for some specific factions and it was up to the players to convert their own miniatures to play if they wished it so. There were never official miniatures for those.

And of course, when you make the claim, you are the one to prove it's indeed a violation of copyright in the actual target of the claim. So I wouldn't be so sure to be as categoric as our fanboy friends from the Conf'fédé. Especially when one of them (Corsair35) is Modo-France from the Confrontation Classic Kickstarter and that it is one at the source of the stupid claim of the "ukrainian campaign to sink Confrontation Classic with troll backers".

> SlowMo is a member of the Conf'fédération, that is clearly pro-SD and one of the fanboys defending blindly SD's kickstarter for the sake of seeing Confrontation back on the scene. So yeah, he tries to be as unbiased as he can.

How, exactly, is gathering similarities between the two properties being "blind"? That would precisely be what Stellar / SD would be doing when presenting their case to a judge, no doubt in some way that would influence the judge to their side.


> So maybe it's Rackham that was stealing the idea from Square Enix, after all.

And it would have been Enix's responsibility to enforce their IP, which Stellar is doing. And, of course, build a case for not only *one* aspect that was similar, but *multiple*.

Perhaps a better example would be Robotech vs. Battletech, still going after two decades..
https://www.pcgamesn.com/battletech/battletech-robotech-lawsuit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE1nOjj23C4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPou5WuE-Y4


> For the cards, to be complete, they were concepts that never led to miniatures at the time Rackham was alive. It was basically alternative profiles for some specific factions and it was up to the players to convert their own miniatures to play if they wished it so. There were never official miniatures for those.

But what are the permissions granted for the use of these concepts and profiles? (In the USA, I think the standard permission would be "For personal use only", which prevents commercial, for-profit, and business use.) And, again, if LoS is using these concepts, then this would further support the idea that they are using the Confrontation IP as part of this "whole".


> And of course, when you make the claim, you are the one to prove it's indeed a violation of copyright in the actual target of the claim

That is absolutely correct. It's up to Stellar to gather all the similarities between LoS and Confrontation, and establish that these similarities existed in Confrontation before they did in LoS, as well as what permissions were granted for other's use of various Confrontation IP properties and whether or not Signum violated or followed these permissions. Again, if Stellar can get to the point where Signum thinks they would lose in court, it would cost less for Signum to change the background at this point, rather than were the product released retail. Signum also has the option of not selling where Stellar has jurisdiction, although I don't know what KS IP policy would be in this when raising funds.

Hey, I'm too a member of the conf'fede forum and player of the conf'fede rules, don't put us all in the same bag please.

While it's blatantly obvious that the minis mentionned by Gleesman are based on the cards that Slowmo showed, I don't know the law well enought to say that they are IP-infringing as some details and posing are different (but it's still very close).

Regarding Umbra, I think it falls into the "inspired by" box as it's not a copy-pasting of a rackham artwork.

I'm surely not defending SD's dumpster fire of a kickstarter and their own business practice here, but highlord tamburlaine already mentioned the minis based on Bonner artwork that really go far beyond 'similarities'. How is this

not an IP infringement of Bonner's illustration here:

Or am I missing any info about what happened regarding the rights here? Didn't really follow the dissolution of Conf previously.

Or am I missing any info about what happened regarding the rights here? Didn't really follow the dissolution of Conf previously.

My understanding is the dispute is regarding the Kickstarter, not items sold on Cadwollan's site (which is why the KS is down). That mini isn't one of the one's being offered so if it is an issue it's a separate one from what's being pursued in this situation.

ced1106 wrote:


How, exactly, is gathering similarities between the two properties being "blind"? That would precisely be what Stellar / SD would be doing when presenting their case to a judge, no doubt in some way that would influence the judge to their side.

He's specifically a blind fanboy because his comments so far on the Confrontation Classic KIckstarter were pretty much dismissing every argument from the so called "trolls" who dared criticize SD and the way they handled their campaign. You have to understand french most of the time to see that, but you can enjoy some of his interventions on their forum : http://confrontation.vraiforum.com/index.php.

The Conf'fédération is on its whole basically pro-SD, given the atmosphere of their forum so far. But SlowMo in particular is one of those I would call "blind fanboys".

And it would have been Enix's responsibility to enforce their IP, which Stellar is doing. And, of course, build a case for not only *one* aspect that was similar, but *multiple*.

My point is that holding the IP doesn't mean you are right in everything. That's the point of having a dispute. We don't know what is exactly the target of the claims, and they have to be specific - it's not just "look that miniature looks surprisingly familiar in that color scheme!".

But what are the explicit permissions granted for the use of these concepts and profiles? And, again, if LoS is using these concepts, then this would further support the idea that they are using the Confrontation IP as part of this

Which is why we have to know what are the targets of the claim. Just throwing cards out of the hat isn't enough since we don't know they are actually part of the claim.

For the rest, I agree.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Samko wrote:
Hey, I'm too a member of the conf'fede forum and player of the conf'fede rules, don't put us all in the same bag please.

I understand your situation, but given the tone of some of your members (especially Corsair35), I'm afraid that picture can still stick. After all, I have read quite astonishing stupid claims on your forum (something like "anyone who join your forum agree to the rules and thus support SD and the holders of the IP"). Maybe you should point this to them so that they get back to reality.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScarletRose wrote:

Or am I missing any info about what happened regarding the rights here? Didn't really follow the dissolution of Conf previously.

My understanding is the dispute is regarding the Kickstarter, not items sold on Cadwollan's site (which is why the KS is down). That mini isn't one of the one's being offered so if it is an issue it's a separate one from what's being pursued in this situation.

Exactly.

Yes, that ork is quite the litteral miniature of that drawing, but thing is...he isn't part of the Kickstarter, and that was the Kickstarter that is the target of the claim.

That said...still an awesome miniature and much more creative than anything SD showed so far with Confrontation. But hey, that's just my biaised point of view here.

 ScarletRose wrote:

Or am I missing any info about what happened regarding the rights here? Didn't really follow the dissolution of Conf previously.

My understanding is the dispute is regarding the Kickstarter, not items sold on Cadwollan's site (which is why the KS is down). That mini isn't one of the one's being offered so if it is an issue it's a separate one from what's being pursued in this situation.

^ This exactly. The discussion, in this case, concerns the project run on Kickstarter, and for those items on offer through the Kickstarter project. And based on what is/was available in the project, does the SD/Stellar claim have any merit?

There are obviously some violations of IP through their website, but that isn't Kickstarter's concern, but rather a matter of legal action if anything.

grefven wrote:
^ This exactly. The discussion, in this case, concerns the project run on Kickstarter, and for those items on offer through the Kickstarter project. And based on what is/was available in the project, does the SD/Stellar claim have any merit?

Two of the minis included in the KS project (Korass and Vitern) are based on rackham profiles that never had minis (griffin executioner and Verdath).
As the poses are a bit different and the cards don't show the full bodies, I don't know how that would be juged, but it's really close to the line.

It's not even within sight of the line with a telescope.

Why did Games Workshop spend the last several years very deliberately only releasing artwork of existing models they sold, or models they were about to begin selling within days? Because they knew fine well that third parties could make their own versions of anything depicted in GW art that GW weren't already selling as a model with almost zero chance of repercussions(whether that behaviour was a good thing to do is another matter).

Have to echo the comments that the Kickstarter in no way had any models or content that could be deemed to be infringing on IP. Not saying that LoS have been squeky clean in the past but the IP infringement is against the Kickstarter campaign which doesn't come close to the very specific IP infringement rules.

Samko wrote:
Two of the minis included in the KS project (Korass and Vitern) are based on rackham profiles that never had minis (griffin executioner and Verdath).
As the poses are a bit different and the cards don't show the full bodies, I don't know how that would be juged, but it's really close to the line.

Gotcha. Were there other similarities in the KS project, such as background and other fluff?

I know the game system itself was quite different from Confrontation.

ced1106 wrote:

Samko wrote:
Two of the minis included in the KS project (Korass and Vitern) are based on rackham profiles that never had minis (griffin executioner and Verdath).
As the poses are a bit different and the cards don't show the full bodies, I don't know how that would be juged, but it's really close to the line.

Gotcha. Were there other similarities in the KS project, such as background and other fluff?

I know the game system itself was quite different from Confrontation.

One of the faction in LoS is the free city of Valor, with various guilds in it one which is the guild of blades, it's quite similar in concept with conf's free city of Cadwallon where several guilds play an important role and one of it is the guild of blades.
The "Gryfrarim empire" name also sounds really close to the empire of the griffins of akkylania (who doesn't have real griffins unlike LoS) from conf.
There's obvious inspiration on theses names and the design of some minis but the story itself seems distinct from conf.

I don't see much hope in trying to claim IP infringement based on artwork that was never given a model versus models that were inspired by that artwork but are clearly in a different medium than the original work.

Well I don't know what standard Kickstarter is using, but as jailhouse IP lawyer, I can say in America claiming a model "looks like" another model is almost certainly a non-starter in court. You don't own "kinda looks like," you just own the thing itself, and somebody needs to copy what you made before they're stealing it. Certainly that can require judgment to determine, but closely inspired by isn't the same as IP infringing.

SlowMo wrote:
Anyway, there are some minis in the KS that do look like Confrontation models, the most blatant one being Umbra:

which really looks like a "repurgateur du temple" from COnfrontation and the boardgame Hybrid

Huh. I thought she kinda looked like a tricorn-less gunmage...

It's probably just about sabotaging a competing Kickstarter.

SD are going with the narrative that LoS damaged their kickstarter with evil Russian trolls asking questions like 'What material will the models be made of?' 'Do you have any models to show us?' and 'How will you fulfill this Kickstarter?'

You know, the sort of questions no genuine customer would ask and no miniatures Kickstarter has ever had to answer.

'Spending' all your money on legal fees might fly as an excuse for not fulfilling, as it gives a narrative where there is someone else to blame.

But really SD have saved us from an amateurish kickstarter full of pictures of production minis, new art and sculpts that are the sort of thing no backer wants to see.

From the Legends of Signum Facebook page:

"Hi all!
We want to notify all our admirers that Kickstarter have received our counter-notification and within 10-14 days we will be waiting for their decision.
Our position still unbreakable. We respect all other companies and developers. We urge all our fans and all other players not to go to the insults of other projects and keep patience. Our goal is to develop an interesting game and unique miniatures, not the showdown with other companies, but in case of injustice, we are always ready and will defend our rights. We are for healthy competition and respect to each other."

https://www.facebook.com/pg/signumgame/posts/

So we have to wait approx. 2 weeks to see what the outcome will be !!

 Albertorius wrote:

SlowMo wrote:
Anyway, there are some minis in the KS that do look like Confrontation models, the most blatant one being Umbra:

which really looks like a "repurgateur du temple" from COnfrontation and the boardgame Hybrid

Huh. I thought she kinda looked like a tricorn-less gunmage...

I’d have said Trigun with a shorter coattail.

 AduroT wrote:

I’d have said Trigun with a shorter coattail.

Ah, yeah, can see it now ^^

I didn't back Legends of Signum, but crap like this makes me want to throw money their way just to give the finger to SD for murdering the Confrontation IP with their amateur hour KS and then using lawyers to try and squash the competition.

I wish they'd run a sale or something on their website to drum up some support in the meantime...