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according to a thread on Frothers (and checking some of the companies mentioned sites)

http://frothersunite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=52584&sid=dfc54a6accda840461b40af3707fa073

Homage figures based on the Dr Who IP are being discontinued by a variety of companies after emails/letters from the BBC (presumably as they have now licenced the IP for miniatures to Warlord and boardgames with minis to galeforce 9)

so if you've been thinking you'll get round to getting some of these one day better act now and grab them where you can before they're gone for good (and the ebay prices shoot up)

Well that sucks, Heresy had a really nice collection that had been going for years

Stopping other companies from making them will not suddenly make me purchase Warlord's crap. Maybe they should consider licensing some of the Heresy ones instead.

Oh poor Crooked Dice, they had some of the best..

Interesting GW is slowly turning it around and other companies are turning in to GW.

Not really.

As much as I would have liked to buy some Not-Who by Heresy and/or CD, Warlord paid the BBC for a licence for the Who IP. The others are unlicensed models, so I feel that it's legit enough to ask them to stop. They're not claiming ownership over every and all figures of doctors of any stripe which would be more akin to the "Spots the Space Marine" thing.

It's just a shame that the official Warlord miniatures are absolutely hideous by comparison. I guess they felt that with an official license, there's no need to bother making something that doesn't look like garbage.

I'll agree with you on the first.

On the second - Never ascribe to Malice what can be explained with Incompetence.

 Azazelx wrote:
Not really.

As much as I would have liked to buy some Not-Who by Heresy and/or CD, Warlord paid the BBC for a licence for the Who IP. The others are unlicensed models, so I feel that it's legit enough to ask them to stop. They're not claiming ownership over every and all figures of doctors of any stripe which would be more akin to the "Spots the Space Marine" thing.

Really, after jacking up the prices of the Wargames factory stuff and putting some of their releases in limbo and now using the IP banhammer, makes them more and more like GW IMHO.

Surely it's the BBC who control the IP, not warlord games, so if anything, any ire should be directed at them? warlord are just paying for the license. The other companies weren't. The BBC are just Protecting their IP.

It sucks for the likes of crooked dice and heresy, but thems the breaks, they knew full well this was a possibility when they started selling Not Doctor Who minis. Surely they knew Auntie Beeb would catch up with them eventually.

Doesn't Black Tree have a line too? I remember looking at some interesting figures there.

As for the not-Who figures IIRC one of the issues in the Chapterhouse case (US law not UK!) was the court found that making minis based on GW art was not a copyright infraction. Am I remembering that right?

The problem is while BBC owns Dr Who, no one can copyright 'eccentric English gentleman in odd clothing' so making minis based on my original character Mr Temporal PhD is just fine.

Precisely when Mr Temporal PhD becomes an unlicenced knock off of Dr Who is a question for the courts.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Doesn't Black Tree have a line too? I remember looking at some interesting figures there.

As for the not-Who figures IIRC one of the issues in the Chapterhouse case (US law not UK!) was the court found that making minis based on GW art was not a copyright infraction. Am I remembering that right?

The problem is while BBC owns Dr Who, no one can copyright 'eccentric English gentleman in odd clothing' so making minis based on my original character Mr Temporal PhD is just fine.

Precisely when Mr Temporal PhD becomes an unlicenced knock off of Dr Who is a question for the courts.

My guess would be the BBC will be able to afford considerably more expensive lawyers than GW can, so the likes of heresy, and crooked dice aren't going to want to take them on.

If you go on the Heresy Minis site you can still buy "Girl in some clothes" but all the other "Not Doctor Who" figures seem to have quietly vanished.

It is a shame since they were good generic modern/SF civvie figures are well as Dr Who.

Luckily I have them all in my huge bin of unpainted models.

I agree with General Kroll that while 'eccentric English gentleman in odd clothing' cannot be copyrighted, it is not worth a small company like Heresy's time and effort to carry on a long legal battle against the BBC and Warlord Games to prove the point.

They forked out the dough for the license, I doubt, given DR W's international appeal, that was cheap. I guess having done that, they felt in the right to go to the BBC and complain about the 'nots', there's a reason they're called 'nots' in the first place...

If they're smart and the indy companies producing these are smart, two things happen, firstly the indys just stop producing the thing they get (legally rightfully) challenged on and secondly the IP owning company doesn't pursue beyond the removal of the offending thing.

One last thing, if you're going to own the IP, if you're going to claim dominion over something, invest in decent sculpts for them... The big complaint I've been reading is that the Heresy 'nots' are far better, prettier minis than the Warlord ones, that given, why on earth did it not occur to Warlord to offer to buy the moulds from Heresy or hire Heresy on to produce for them? I'm sure mutual accord could have been reached with a little adult reasoning/gentleman's agreement.

Aren't the Warlord sculpts also on a somewhat different scale?

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
They forked out the dough for the license, I doubt, given DR W's international appeal, that was cheap. I guess having done that, they felt in the right to go to the BBC and complain about the 'nots', there's a reason they're called 'nots' in the first place...

If they're smart and the indy companies producing these are smart, two things happen, firstly the indys just stop producing the thing they get (legally rightfully) challenged on and secondly the IP owning company doesn't pursue beyond the removal of the offending thing.

One last thing, if you're going to own the IP, if you're going to claim dominion over something, invest in decent sculpts for them... The big complaint I've been reading is that the Heresy 'nots' are far better, prettier minis than the Warlord ones, that given, why on earth did it not occur to Warlord to offer to buy the moulds from Heresy or hire Heresy on to produce for them? I'm sure mutual accord could have been reached with a little adult reasoning/gentleman's agreement.

That's the thing though, most of them almost certainly aren't "legally rightfully" infringing on anything; Dr Who doesn't have a distinctive "uniform", you can't copyright "vaguely technological cylindrical handheld device", and the models don't use any of the BBCs trademarks. Homages are not illegal, you have to be specifically infringing something to breach copyright law and even Auntie would struggle to get a court to agree that you can infringe on something as nebulous as "man in a suit holding a cylinder". This is a textbook example of a large organisation that can afford lawyers bullying smaller organisations that can't into taking actions the smaller group would almost certainly not be compelled to take if the case went to court, there's nothing right about it and if we lived in a sane society this sort of behaviour would be a legal offense in and of itself.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Doesn't Black Tree have a line too? I remember looking at some interesting figures there.

As for the not-Who figures IIRC one of the issues in the Chapterhouse case (US law not UK!) was the court found that making minis based on GW art was not a copyright infraction. Am I remembering that right?

The problem is while BBC owns Dr Who, no one can copyright 'eccentric English gentleman in odd clothing' so making minis based on my original character Mr Temporal PhD is just fine.

Precisely when Mr Temporal PhD becomes an unlicenced knock off of Dr Who is a question for the courts.

Black Tree had a licence to do Dr Who stuff long ago, and are supposedly selling 'old stock' which they are apparently entitled to do....... although how you'd go about proving a metal mini was cast after the licence expired I don't know

 Azazelx wrote:
Not really.

As much as I would have liked to buy some Not-Who by Heresy and/or CD, Warlord paid the BBC for a licence for the Who IP. The others are unlicensed models, so I feel that it's legit enough to ask them to stop. They're not claiming ownership over every and all figures of doctors of any stripe which would be more akin to the "Spots the Space Marine" thing.

To be fair, the BBC's legal footing on this is extremely tenuous.

To be entirely fair, everybody knows what folks like Heresy and Crooked Dice were doing, and thus far we don't know whether or not the BBC has decided to be unreasonable dicks.

We should all hope that this gets resolved amiably.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yodhrin wrote:
That's the thing though, most of them almost certainly aren't "legally rightfully" infringing on anything; Dr Who doesn't have a distinctive "uniform", you can't copyright "vaguely technological cylindrical handheld device", and the models don't use any of the BBCs trademarks. Homages are not illegal, you have to be specifically infringing something to breach copyright law and even Auntie would struggle to get a court to agree that you can infringe on something as nebulous as "man in a suit holding a cylinder". This is a textbook example of a large organisation that can afford lawyers bullying smaller organisations that can't into taking actions the smaller group would almost certainly not be compelled to take if the case went to court, there's nothing right about it and if we lived in a sane society this sort of behaviour would be a legal offense in and of itself.

It's a shame, certainly, but at least an understandable, predictable shame. Again, we can hope that things get worked out amiably.

Maybe the minis will make quiet reappearances as 'Man in a suit with a thing' somewhere down the line. Basically any company in the TTG market is fragile and vulnerable, and indie producers manifestly so. There's plenty of room for reasonable minds to prevail here. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

But it does behoove all of us to take an interest in events like this.

Awww all the CD ones are quietly gone from their website too. Thankfully I had the ones I really wanted... but some were really nice generic figures, especially the companions.

Hopefully they have been pulled to have new heads adding; that would solve that problem easily enough

While I'm sure that Heresy and CD could simply relist them in a "generic civilians" line at some point, painted differently for their webstores - the real problem for them then in many ways is us.

I can already see it - on here and other forums -


Subject: Heresy Dr Who figures ARE BACK!!!!


so much for doing it quietly...

 Azazelx wrote:
While I'm sure that Heresy and CD could simply relist them in a "generic civilians" line at some point, painted differently for their webstores - the real problem for them then in many ways is us.

I can already see it - on here and other forums -


Subject: Heresy Dr Who figures ARE BACK!!!!


so much for doing it quietly...

That's an interesting observation. In the US, there's definitely precedent from the GW v CHS case for admitting forum posts as evidence of trademark infringement (if I recall correctly).

Ideally, stuff like this would never see the inside of a courtroom. One wonders when picking up the fething phone fell out of style, but hopefully the BBC just wants to make a point and establish a defense of its marks in this space, and ultimately doesn't care about whether Heresy Miniatures sells a few hundred unpainted British dudes holding dildos.

One would hope. Again, it remains to be seen.

To all of those companies I say hold onto the molds. On a second note, Do you think Dr Who has the staying power in its current... incoherent form?

We are seeing Warlord walk into GW territory as they start to take a page out of the GW Customer relations manual. Too bad. Some of those additional companies figures are top notch compared to what I have seen so far from Warlord.

Its as if Warlord is hiding behind legalese in lieu of quality product.

It's really not the same thing.

Hey now, if a potshot can be taken at GW, then damn it, it must be done, no matter how ill-thought or tenuous!!!

Well that's one way to solve Warlord's middling sculpting quality. Simply have all the better sculpts removed from the market.

I was thinking of picking up a Heresy War Dr as well.

It is a shame. Really wanted one of the current doctor and CDs pertwee was amazing.

Wouldnt be if warlords ones wernt rubbish....

Ah, wargamers and unlicensed minis. Where it's stealing if the Chinese or Rusians do it but it's not stealing if the Murrikans or Brits do it.

Glad I bought the Heresy sculpts a while ago, they are some fantastic minis, really look like the actors, right down to the wrinkles.

Warlord sculpts are terrible, they have the same kind of pudgey, mis-proportioned, awkwardly posed, not-quite heroic scale look to them that all their figures have.

The only minis I like of theirs are the zombies and survivors, but those are simply wargames factory's excellent work repackaged with the price quadrupled.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Ah, wargamers and unlicensed minis. Where it's stealing if the Chinese or Rusians do it but it's not stealing if the Murrikans or Brits do it.

Nail on the head.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Ah, wargamers and unlicensed minis. Where it's stealing if the Chinese or Rusians do it but it's not stealing if the Murrikans or Brits do it.

What do you mean? I thought only recasting was considered stealing, whereas making "not-" minis is usually considered fair unless they cross a line directly into IP theft, which almost none do. Look at the Chapterhouse lawsuit and you can see there is a lot of room for minis to share similarities without violating trademarks. The not-Doctor Who minis were all clearly homages, but they were also clearly generic modern people at the same time, existing in the same grey area as the almost-Transformers toys you see at the dollar store and the not-Disney knock offs that come out after Disney movies. Shady, sure sometimes, but stealing?

I guess it comes down to how you feel about homages, since they are everywhere. I would prefer to live in a world with Sly Marbo minis and Zombiecide exclusives than one where C&D's make parodies and homages too risky.