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Fan-artwork
Individuals may create their own artwork, drawings and designs, based on our characters and settings, but these must:

not include artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop material
be non-commercial, with no money being received or paid. This includes all forms of fundraising activity, and generation of any advertising revenue
not be publicly distributed, except for no-charge digital distribution
make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos
not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity of Games Workshop or its intellectual property

How does this work? GW encourage their customers to copy the box art on their miniatures. Is copying the box art "artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop material"?
What about battle reports? Are they illegal if they have advertising or paid subscriptions if the miniatures are painted in official colour schemes?

Chapterhouse was a good thing.

Just think what Warhammer games would be like without Aelves, Duardin Orruks or my most detested term 'Astra Militarum'.

GW fixed it's reputation, now it can go back to being the corporation it's always been. It's not your friend, never has been.

IP lawyers suck the joy out of absolutely everything.

Aash wrote:

Fan-artwork
Individuals may create their own artwork, drawings and designs, based on our characters and settings, but these must:

not include artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop material
be non-commercial, with no money being received or paid. This includes all forms of fundraising activity, and generation of any advertising revenue
not be publicly distributed, except for no-charge digital distribution
make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos
not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity of Games Workshop or its intellectual property

How does this work? GW encourage their customers to copy the box art on their miniatures. Is copying the box art "artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop material"?
What about battle reports? Are they illegal if they have advertising or paid subscriptions if the miniatures are painted in official colour schemes?

Little bit of blutac over any GW image it must be from now on, decals GW owned.
Battle report should be fine, as derivative work. And I not sure even GW would be crazy enough to cut that off. Painting your minis is intended, so they would eventually be telling people in a legal document that painting GW miniatures is bad.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
Problem is here "setting" which means anything in the grim dark universe as no work that is related to 40k at all

not even CBS was stupid enough to go that far with fan films

and "trademarks" is vague as what GW believe is a valid trademark and what people can still use are 2 different things

is Spot the Space Marine against GWs trademarks?
GW said yes, Court said no

GW does own the trademark to "Space Marine", they were within their rights to try and defend that.

they do not
they own the trademark in context of 40k, as soon as 40k is out, it is not within their rights to defend it and they just hope that the other has not the money to go to court
(other companies have fallen for that too, like thinking if they trademark their logo/banner/icon they can defend against anyone who uses the same combination of colours)

that GW now goes hard against fan-fiction which would be usually fall under fair use says a lot
as I wrote, even CBS did not try to shut down fan-films at all but just put very specific restrictions on them

 Pacific wrote:

It was a horrible, horrible time to be an active member of that fan community.

I remember that time very well, topics like now in the News would be deleted because of fear GW would send a letter or shut down the forum for embedded pictures and discussing rules or points

the time 3rd party online shops were not allowed to list GW products with pictures and GW wanted people to add "copyright by GW" to any picture of painted miniatures


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Apple fox wrote:
And I not sure even GW would be crazy enough to cut that off.

they once were that crazy, hope to learned something from the past

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I wonder how specific they'll be with "material copied from any official Games Workshop material".
If I write "Death Korps of Krieg" in my fanfic, is that allowed?
What if I include an aquila in my fan art? What if I draw one of those Krieg models? Is that copied?

...these remarks don't track. It's not "typical copyright and trademark protection stuff" to claim the right to control things that even resemble your IP, as this policy does.

....Yes, it is. If something actually infringes is another matter but that is broadly how copyright and trademarks work. I've seen quite a few seemingly wrong interpretations of what this sort of thing involves ever since the Chapterhouse lawsuit. It's always "GW lost so they were wrong!" without looking into just what they lost on and why.

There is nothing out of the ordinary here, this is all just what copyright and trademark law says. They own the copyright to the miniatures, designs, artwork, text, pictures and all the rest, so that means no counterfeit or recast models and no illegal downloading of their material which are the obvious copyright breaches. Fan-animations, use of artwork, making games etc that use IP without permission of the copyright holder can be stopped if they choose to do so, because you simply don't have the rights to use those (depending on the specific circumstance). Neither of those are something GW has just decided should now be the case, the law already said those.

Imitation models are the one that's a bit more difficult to determine. This is the one that mainly relates to the chapterhouse lawsuit the most - which many people seem to forget GW did win on with some of the copyright stuff, about 1/3 of the copyright claims were won by GW. Things like the underlaying shapes and design ethos are not copyrightable, while some miniatures that imitated GW products closely like the Doomseer were determined to be infringing.

This is how copyright works - you can't use someone elses IP to do whatever you like. They haven't written anything here that is different from what copyright already covered.

alphaecho wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


All I can say is I very much hope they bring a case against someone in the UK who's willing to fight them, because I look forward to contributing to that person's legal fund in the hope Lucasfilm v Ainsworth will screw GW over for good.

In the meantime, yo ho yo ho etc is doubtless about to become a very common refrain.

Is the Lucasfilm vs Ainsworth case the reason I ended up with a delightful Marks and Spencers chocolate 'Original Stormtrooper' helmet at Easter in a box that did not say Star Wars anywhere on it?

Possibly, or it could just be a licensed product - they'll slap Star Wars branding on anything. Basically Ainsworth worked on the production of the OT and still had original Stormtrooper armour molds, he made and sold suits for 501st cosplayers, Disney tried to have him sued out of existence but the whole thing fell apart for them because his team argued that, as the basis for film props, the Stormtrooper fell under Design Rights rather than Copyright(which is only for artistic works) and they realised that concept might extend even to designs that had subsequently been used to mass-produce anything - toys, for instance - and could lose control of basically the whole back catalogue as Design Rights only last for a limited period of time and even some of that period is highly conditional.

So if GW push things and went up against the right lawyer with the right judge...well, at least they'd still have Age of Sigmar and Primaris...

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
-snip-

Aye okay pal.

 Da Boss wrote:
The two things that really stand out to me about this are the stuff about recasting and imitation models. They just cannot enforce that crap. If I make a model that is similar to a GW model, how exactly are they going to sue me for it? They'd lose in court because it only needs to have minor differences to not be a direct copy, and as long as I don't advertise it as a GW model and give it a different name they can do nothing about it.

And as to recasting, I can recast any of my models. They're mine. I fully own them after I buy them. I can recast any object I own, make copies of anything I have bought. I can scan them and make 3D prints. Of course I can. And then I can sell them as well, they're my property and I can go to a car boot sale or flea market or sell them to any other individual.

There's obviously a difference if I set up an online shop selling GW recasts and so on. That's fair enough. But any hobbyist can recast, scan, or 3D print whatever the hell they want, and yeah, they can go sell their army on ebay afterwards if they want to. GW cannot enforce that and look stupid for trying.

As for fan animations and creations, well, I hope people stop creating them then. Less advertisement for a stupid company with an asinine approach to their IP, most of which is stolen from Michael Moorcock or folklore in any case.

Pretty much none of this is correct. Recasting, 3D scanning and printing or any other reproduction of a model is a copyright infringement in exactly the same way photocopying a book and selling it at your local flea market would be. It doesn't matter if there's an online shop or not. It gets a bit more complicated with miniatures over something like a book because having two copies of a miniature is a potential financial gain, while having a back-up copy of a book you own is not. Anything that isn't a direct copy also gets into the grey area of derivative works. One of the standard tests often applied in that situation is the concept of whether there may be confusion about which is the original and which is the derivative work. It's all very subjective and each case needs to be taken on its own merits so you can't really definitely say you can or can't do something.

Of course, there's always the related issue of how likely you are to get caught, but that's separate form the legal position of what you're doing. I agree enforcement can often be difficult or near-impossible, depending on what the infringement is.

In general I think people are getting a little hyperbolic in their reactions to this. GW's policy is not that different to any other large corporation with its own extensive IP. The language is fairly similar and the expanded info they give over and above the bullet points sets out their position fairly well to try to avoid confusion. I know it's fashionable to hate GW but this is not something specific only to them and is a fairly unremarkable policy change in light of them setting up their own animation studio.

I'm glad to see the armchair IP lawyers have joined forces with the armchair business consultants to once again tell us that a business issuing a fairly normal statement on IP is somehow overstepping it's legal bounds and ruining it's business. IT's not doing either, and we need to stop pretending that it is.

As a few posters have noted, GW operates in a variety of markets with significantly different frameworks of IP law, but based on my limited understanding of US law, nothing in here seems out of place or overly broad. Even point five is limited to commercial use. Unauthorised use of our trademarks - unauthorised use or registration of our trademarks in respect of similar products or services is not permitted. (emphasis added)

People point out that this hurts the GW fan community, which it does, but it forgets the one key thing: GW doesn't want fans, it wants customers.

Fair enough Slipspace.

To me, a fair bit of my annoyance is that GW's IP is a deeply derivative series of rip offs, some blatant, some not. And they take an extremely high handed approach for a company based on ripping off other people's ideas and smushing them together.

GW: Forge the Narative!

IP Lawyers: Nope, can't do that as it would be infringing upon the intellectual property of the works and players cannot write their own fan-fiction

GW: Create your own Homebrew Chapter of Space Marine

IP Lawyer: Nope, no creativity allowed here.

GW: Share with us your battle reports

IP Lawyer: You really didn't get the memo did you?

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
So how long until that is extended to written works and GW tries to sue Fanfiction.net into the ground?

From the linked page:

Fan-sites
Individuals may create their own fan sites based on our characters and settings, but these must:

not include text, artwork, imagery, footage or animation copied from any official Games Workshop material
make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos
not post or display rules or stats copied from from any official Games Workshop material
not be prejudicial to the goodwill, reputation or integrity of Games Workshop or its intellectual property

So... Lexicanum is now illegal? Given how it uses official images and quotes from official material. 1d4chan is definetly illegal, since in addition to also putting official GW artwork on their pages, the tactics pages usually mentions unit stats and rules.. and I'd say the style is very prejudiced to Games Workshop.

Yeah that’s the first thing I thoUght when reading that.
I wonder how much they’re gonna have to trawl through their pages and change.

My big worry is how this affects - invaluable - fan resources like Yaktribe, Battlescribe, playing group blogs, etc. That mention of 'stats' is a bit worrying.

It just makes me worry so much, but I don't know enough about this to know if it will lead to a return to the bad old days?

 Polonius wrote:


People point out that this hurts the GW fan community, which it does, but it forgets the one key thing: GW doesn't want fans, it wants customers.

This is astonishingly ignorant. Without loyal fans obsessing over the setting and collecting up every scrap of detail they wouldn't, for example, have sold half so many Horus Heresy books. Steps that have a chilling effect on fandom will absolutely lose them customers and hurt the bottom line. It's funny reading someone dragging on "armchair" experts while simultaneously saying something so boneheaded themselves

It'd be incredibly funny if due to sudden dearth of fan-created materials warhammer r34 would end up on top of google searches. Unlikely, but it'd be funny as heck.

 Polonius wrote:
I'm glad to see the armchair IP lawyers have joined forces with the armchair business consultants to once again tell us that a business issuing a fairly normal statement on IP is somehow overstepping it's legal bounds and ruining it's business. IT's not doing either, and we need to stop pretending that it is.

As a few posters have noted, GW operates in a variety of markets with significantly different frameworks of IP law, but based on my limited understanding of US law, nothing in here seems out of place or overly broad. Even point five is limited to commercial use. Unauthorised use of our trademarks - unauthorised use or registration of our trademarks in respect of similar products or services is not permitted. (emphasis added)

People point out that this hurts the GW fan community, which it does, but it forgets the one key thing: GW doesn't want fans, it wants customers.

And yeah, look at any other big companies IP statements. Marvel or DC for instance and others.
You can’t make stuff off their IP is the general takeaway with most big companies properties..

I'm pretty sure most people will just ignore this and carry on, until GW takes a big court case against someone and loses again.

GW's "new rules" are extremely standard IP protection. I'm not really seeing the issue, other than rehashing the fact they've been over-litigious and overly-threatening in the past and they generally suck as a company.

People should realize that their new animation shows mean they're working with other companies now. I don't know how the deals went down, who's paying who, who gets what profits, but it doesn't really matter, these animation companies are spending their money to make money with GW's IP, and they're going to expect to receive standard market protection from that IP's holder.

Imagine buying the rights to make a TV show from some famous author's book, and then somebody else goes, "I'm going to make a TV show based off that book too, but I'm not asking permission and I'm not paying rights," and the author was like, "Yeah that's cool too." That just doesn't fly for obvious reasons.

How much of this IP rules is new, and how much is what has always been there?

I get that they need to protect their IP, and as a business obviously don't want people 3D printing their designs, or getting rules for free.


I also wonder how fiercely they intend to enforce these rules, or if it's a case of "We'll leave it alone, until it's an issue and then we have these guidelines to back us up".

I'm not going to get on a soapbox and claim the sky is falling just yet. Although, I know how much fun it is to hate on GW.

 jaredb wrote:
How much of this IP rules is new, and how much is what has always been there?

I get that they need to protect their IP, and as a business obviously don't want people 3D printing their designs, or getting rules for free.
.

None of this is new. It's all just part of what copyright and trademarks laws say and how things worked even before this was posted, despite what some people here seem to be claiming.

You cannot use someone elses trademarks or copyright, outside of certain contexts, without their permission.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Wow and I thought Chapter House was a mess. I guess GW is still GW.

They never stopped. They just got a nice shiny coat of fresh paint and a Facebook page.

And the people here lapped it up.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Wow and I thought Chapter House was a mess. I guess GW is still GW.

They never stopped. They just got a nice shiny coat of fresh paint and a Facebook page.

And the people here lapped it up.

It's ridiculous to me that even in this thread people are like "its completely fine and normal". I wonder if they'll say the same if GW decides to sue or C&D an artist who drew a 40k drawing on commission or something. Or Emperor's Text To Speech. Though on the upside I suppose it means less furry space marine art.

I'm not quite ready to say things might be as bad as they were HBMC.

I think saying that fails to do credit to how awful things were in the early 10's, when it was dubbed the 'summer of terror' on this very forum I believe. Still have a ways to go!

PetitionersCity wrote:
My big worry is how this affects - invaluable - fan resources like Yaktribe, Battlescribe, playing group blogs, etc. That mention of 'stats' is a bit worrying.

It just makes me worry so much, but I don't know enough about this to know if it will lead to a return to the bad old days?

Yes right that is my fear too. Can you imagine if Yaktribe, with their community edit versions of Necromunda, got taken offline?

It would wreck the pastime of hundreds (if not thousands) of hobbyists that rely on that resource and that cornerstone of that game community would be gone.

The same with the Epic communities on FB who keep the Epic Space Marine and Armageddon rules going (and derivative rules like NetEpic).

You would like to think they are too small fry but it only needs one C&D on a similar site, one nervous site owner, and off they go. The threat would sometimes be enough.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Wow and I thought Chapter House was a mess. I guess GW is still GW.

They never stopped. They just got a nice shiny coat of fresh paint and a Facebook page.

And the people here lapped it up.

It's ridiculous to me that even in this thread people are like "its completely fine and normal". I wonder if they'll say the same if GW decides to sue or C&D an artist who drew a 40k drawing on commission or something. Or Emperor's Text To Speech. Though on the upside I suppose it means less furry space marine art.

It is completely normal. This is what copyright and trademark law covers. This was all in place even before they said all this.

Whether you like it or not or whether it would be a good idea for GW enforce it without any semblance of nuance is another matter. What's written here is still just how IP law works regardless.

Doesn't Emperor's T2S use artwork cut out of official GW artworks for it's animation?

I think that definitely is infringement that GW would be in their rights to ask removed.

Billicus wrote:

 Polonius wrote:


People point out that this hurts the GW fan community, which it does, but it forgets the one key thing: GW doesn't want fans, it wants customers.

This is astonishingly ignorant. Without loyal fans obsessing over the setting and collecting up every scrap of detail they wouldn't, for example, have sold half so many Horus Heresy books. Steps that have a chilling effect on fandom will absolutely lose them customers and hurt the bottom line. It's funny reading someone dragging on "armchair" experts while simultaneously saying something so boneheaded themselves

Black library accounts for less than 1% of their revenue. (https://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019-20-Press-statement-1.pdf page 20).

I'm obviously being slightly hyperbolic, fans of GW have some value to the company, but they're going to focus on their paying customers.

 Pacific wrote:
I think saying that fails to do credit to how awful things were in the early 10's, when it was dubbed the 'summer of terror' on this very forum I believe. Still have a ways to go!

To be fair, I hadn't thought about the stuff you wrote in quite some time. I do remember pictures being taken down in N&R because of GW's brain-dead policies (or, at the very least, the fear of said moronic policies).

It might also be the origin of those mind-numbing rules posts where we'd be told that this unit costs "one rhino minus 3 Gretchin in points" and other such asinine nonsense. Glad we're past that... or are we?

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Wow and I thought Chapter House was a mess. I guess GW is still GW.

They never stopped. They just got a nice shiny coat of fresh paint and a Facebook page.

And the people here lapped it up.

It's ridiculous to me that even in this thread people are like "its completely fine and normal". I wonder if they'll say the same if GW decides to sue or C&D an artist who drew a 40k drawing on commission or something. Or Emperor's Text To Speech. Though on the upside I suppose it means less furry space marine art.

It is completely normal. This is what copyright and trademark law covers. This was all in place even before they said all this.

Whether you like it or not or whether it would be a good idea for GW enforce it without any semblance of nuance is another matter. What's written here is still just how IP law works regardless.

Every time an artist does a commission piece based on another IP, they have left themselves open to action. That's just how IP law works. You may have a super cool take on Darth Vader that's unique and creative, but it's still Darth Vader, and using him is a breach.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Wow and I thought Chapter House was a mess. I guess GW is still GW.

They never stopped. They just got a nice shiny coat of fresh paint and a Facebook page.

And the people here lapped it up.

It's ridiculous to me that even in this thread people are like "its completely fine and normal". I wonder if they'll say the same if GW decides to sue or C&D an artist who drew a 40k drawing on commission or something. Or Emperor's Text To Speech. Though on the upside I suppose it means less furry space marine art.

Well it is kinda normal, Fine is probably where the Debate is.
Personally I am in the middle, defending your rights to a creation is a huge pain in the ass.
Especially when bigger creators can just copy wholesale your idea and effectively bury you.
It’s a big reason why people are happy to sell ideas to places like Disney, you may lose some creative freedom.
But they can protect it as well.

There is a big deal with art theft and it will often be talked about when ever it happens quite wide in the community’s.
But it’s crazy to think how often a YouTube personality will make video after video on how bad art theft is, why using someone else’s music without permission.
Too many twitch/YouTube streams trying to be radio stations as well.