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I'm just sad that I missed out on my chance to buy RH's Lammasu - too late now, all gone... like tears in rain.

Having said that, lets try and get back on topic!

Alpharius wrote:I'm just sad that I missed out on my chance to buy RH's Lammasu - too late now, all gone... like tears in rain.

Having said that, lets try and get back on topic!

Shoot 'em an email, they might have some stock they'd be willing to part with at discount.

Alpharius wrote:I'm just sad that I missed out on my chance to buy RH's Lammasu - too late now, all gone... like tears in rain.

Having said that, lets try and get back on topic!

Don't mourn too much Alpharius, I have a feeling that if CHS win this, that Lammasu will reappear on their website quicker than you can imagine.

Do you think that GW have envisaged loosing this so bad thgat their trying to recoup their losses through the recent price rises?



Cheers

Andrew

GW's price increases are part of a long tradition of price increases. I kind of wish they had as much sense as Privateer Press and would feel like they should explain things to their customer/fan base.

I remember that a while ago, they had a "price adjustment" which meant a significant price increase on everything except a few overpriced special characters that no one wanted and no one bought. Those mini (there were like two of them) decreased in price a tiny bit. When they talked about said price "adjustment" there were a lot of references to those minis.


Anyway, I'm not sure that they think they'll be losing so much money in this law suit. They haven't caused any amount of damage to Chapterhouse that would be significant for them. Punitive damages would be huge for Chapterhouse, and they would be large enough for Games Workshop that they should start thinking twice before bullying larger companies.

It would be interesting to see some kind of class action suit from all of the small companies that have been bullied. I wonder how strong the legal ground for that would be.

Official statement is up:

No More Lamassu

posted May 19, 2011

It is with our deepest regret that we have to announce that the Lamassu head is no more part of our Manticore kit We recently received an email from a Games Workshop attorney claiming that our Lamassu head was too similar to their Chaos Dwarves' Lamasu and asking us to stop selling this head. At this point in time we don’t have the time to further investigate this mater and so we've decided to currently withdraw the Lamassu head from sale, either online or in shop. We are sorry if you were planning to get one. So please note that at this point in time THERE IS NO MORE LAMASSU HEAD available with our Manticore kit.

http://www.ragingheroes.com/blogs/news/3241852-no-more-lamassu

Don't suppose this is the right time to make jokes about no more Lamassu head. :(

This is a real shame. Loved the concept drawings and the sculpt.

Hey, we noticed there are a few likenesses in your lamassu when compared to our crappy 20 year old sculpt, especially since you used skulls and everybody knows that skulls were invented by GW so we'd like for you to stop selling your model because it's too close to one that we don't sell anymore. BTW, do you like our nice runon sentence?
Much Love,

GW Legal Department

ps, if you have any extras of those lying around please send them to us so we can "research" them further.

Its about as strikingly similar as if my children tried to make a lammassu out of Play-Do.

Actually no, my children would make a better mythological creature than GW did.

Maybe someone should make a new line of Squats and see if GW admit they once did?

Have they tried to copyright the individual elements of "Space" and "Marine" yet?

The head does look really really similar.

Two works of art can look very similar without one necessarily being a copyright violating copy of the other.

The difficulty is that you have to have an expensive court case to determine it.

Small companies like Raging H do not have the time and money to defend themselves against GW.

This is bizarre. Its like a reversal of the Chapterhouse "That Eldar Farseer doesn't look anything like an Eldar Farseer" rubbish. It seems that GW have even managed to pervert the power of sight to their cause.

Mr Hyena wrote:The head does look really really similar.

Like how a sow's ear looks exactly like a silk purse?

ArbeitsSchu wrote:This is bizarre. Its like a reversal of the Chapterhouse "That Eldar Farseer doesn't look anything like an Eldar Farseer" rubbish. It seems that GW have even managed to pervert the power of sight to their cause.

Or maybe Raging Heroes just isn't interested in starting up a whole thing, when they can (as they've proven) just make a new, fairly different head that still retains the overall quality of their line.

Or hell, maybe they feel they can't contest it under the laws where their company is based(France).

George Spiggott wrote:

Mr Hyena wrote:The head does look really really similar.

Like how a sow's ear looks exactly like a silk purse?

More like "blatantly copied" really.

Oh and before the inevitable: that is, in no way, a defense of GW asking them to stop production on it. It looked kind of like the old GW production, but at the same time there was a noticeably different 'feel'.

Kanluwen wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:This is bizarre. Its like a reversal of the Chapterhouse "That Eldar Farseer doesn't look anything like an Eldar Farseer" rubbish. It seems that GW have even managed to pervert the power of sight to their cause.

Or maybe Raging Heroes just isn't interested in starting up a whole thing, when they can (as they've proven) just make a new, fairly different head that still retains the overall quality of their line.

Or hell, maybe they feel they can't contest it under the laws where their company is based(France).

Just to clarify: I'm commenting on people claiming the two look "really really the same". The CH Farseer looks like a Farseer, but some people try to insist that it looks hugely different. Now people are trying to insist that the RH Lammassu looks loads like the GW Play-Do-Ssu when it just doesn't. Quite apart from the epic leap in quality, it resembles the GW lammassu only in that it looks a) like a lammassu (the mythological beast) and b) it looks like a beardy tusk-man/flying bull combination.

Whether RH choose to dispute this is down to them, but any court that finds "striking similarity" in these two is going to have to also take issue with Ancient Abyssinia and I'll have to shave my beard just in case GW sue me for "having a beard."

OK, once again - everyone take a look at the title of this thread and please try to stay on topic.

Please start a new thread about RH, GW and The Lamassu, if you'd like.

Thanks!

Not to drag the thread off topic again, but there is a very interesting point to be made concerning both the similarities and the differences in the CHS/Paulson case and the example of RH receiving a C&D e-mail from GW:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:This is bizarre. Its like a reversal of the Chapterhouse "That Eldar Farseer doesn't look anything like an Eldar Farseer" rubbish. It seems that GW have even managed to pervert the power of sight to their cause.

This is the disparity in the legal system(s), where one party has deep pockets and can harrass the other party into capitulation. The only offset to this is where the smaller party is able to secure free (or really cheap) representation.

Also, while it is interesting to do a comparison between CHS and Paulson's circumstances versus RH's, there is a distinct difference. IIRC, RH is a European company, and I have a feeling that GW has a greater level of protections and privileges than it would in an American court. Add to this that regardless of whatever happens in the CHS case, this will have no bearing at all legally on what GW is still able to do in regard to its typical practices in Europe.

I have never taken a comparitive legal studies course, but I have a feeling that at least in parts of Europe, and possibly particularly in the UK, wealth has a much greater impact on access to the courts. I never really considered that until recently, when I read an article about the practice of the wealthy in the UK being able to obtain "private injunctions" against newspapers, etc., about publishing any stories about them, simply by hiring an attorney and forking out about 100k to ask the court to impose this injunction. This would not be possible in the U.S.

The overall point I am trying to make is that there are two very different sets of legal rules in play, and you could conceivably have the exact same fact pattern, but still end up with two very different results. And too, there might very well be similar laws in play, but the overiding factor may again be the ability to secure representation. GW can, and most of the small operators cannot. You see this pattern repeated over and over again; and GW realizes this, and so it acts with impunity.

Eldanar,

While I think you are completely right in that a US precedent is not a UK precendent the legal systems have a lot more similarities than differences. I do think that the CHS/GW case is being watched carefully regardless of nationality and a loss in US is going to make others seriously reconsider easy capitulation.

GW brought this case, they are the plantif, they forced a jury trial and now it would seem the best case scenario is to settle out of court. The holier than thou image has slipped in one of the most litiginous countries in the world. GWs position does have advantages in the UK that they don't have in the US, but now people will be asking is that position as unassailable as GW makes out. And on receipt of a C&D letter they may be getting the reply now, of "How does it infringe on your IP, how can I change it so that it doesn't"

If GW can't actually point to a specific piece and say "that" much in the way they said "CHS knows how they broke our IP" I would be responding that the C&D is a paper tiger to try and force you to desist.

Saying that's infringing doesn't seem to be valid any more, and unless GW can say exactly why it's infringing then my view is that they are just chancing their arm with a threat of deep pockets.

Cheers

Andrew

Will defer to those with superior and more up to date knowledge but from what I remember of Common Law studies back in the stone age, that is pretty much correct.
While US cases do not set binding precedent, it can be considered in a UK court.

Mr Hyena wrote:

George Spiggott wrote:

Mr Hyena wrote:The head does look really really similar.

Like how a sow's ear looks exactly like a silk purse?

More like "blatantly copied" really.

They're legally allowed to do what they did, even if GW says otherwise, so I'm not going into that. I'm going to talk about the ethics first. Its all variation on a theme, if people in the past had this same sort of perspective you're claiming, every representation of Jesus or whatever else in classic artworks would have to be entirely different. They aren't, and for the longest time there was actually the notion of a refinement of concepts, where there was the express expectation of portions of original works coming in some part from existing works. The ethical belief that Raging Heroes shouldn't have done this is an entirely fictitious notion that stem from year of companies like GW imposing a false sense of super entitlement.

Just because two things look alike doesn't mean the first instance is some how more in the right. IF, GW some how went to court and won, restitution and remedy would be sooooo drastically reduced because of the incredibly derivative nature of their work. I think people confuse alot of the subtleties here in that GW's representation of a Lamassu, isn't part of its IP, it can't ever completely be. There is a distinction between unique IP, and an original stylized version of a preexisting concept. Such a work is only really protected in its unique instance, such as stopping someone from recasting it or use without reinterpretation... or trade dress. Stylizing a lamassu similar to GW isn't the same as copying their exact interpretation; as it is as much a stylized interpretation to the original concept as it maybe from GW's.

The idea that because Raging Heroes made this *gasp* to provide a service and make money should have no bearing on this. At best this fact is only relevant so far as if restitution were a hypothetical possibility.

As far as the similarities between the GW model and Raging Heroes' the interpretations people have given are rather superficial, looking at only the similarities of specific features while disregarding many differences. First the most blatant thing is Raging Heroes' Lamassu model shares a common body with a Manticore model... GW's is a bull's body... by volume that's almost 80% of the model. The riders are distinctly different, that's another 10% difference. Then we have the heads... the only part people have bothered to talk about; how similar in size are the heads? The Raging Heroes' head has shorter horns; it has a mane and not a perm; it has braided beard instead of just a curly beard; it has adornment on the tips of its beard, GW's doesn't; it has forehead ridges, GW's doesn't; and it has protrusions that wrap the base of the horns, GW's doesn't. That means at best GW's claims hinges on only about 4% similarity. My tablet PC has more than that to a IPad. I would call that a passing superficial similarity and easily enough to say the remaining differences are a by product of common themes, inspiration, and use. Even if Raging Heroes admitted to trying to copy GW and to take their sales with this model, that is irrelevant and its an expectation of competition that competitors will try to match and surpass you... even still the similarities are too immaterial.

Paulson's answer to the complaint is up.

Here's some highlights, but it is otherwise mostly that Paulson lacks sufficient information and therefore denies the claim.

ANSWER: Paulson denies any copying as alleged in paragraph 36. Because Plaintiff has
failed to identify what products infringe what copyright(s), Paulson lacks sufficient information
to admit or deny the allegations in paragraph 36 and therefore denies them.

ANSWER: Paulson lacks sufficient information as to the allegations in paragraph 37,
and therefore denies them. Paulson lacks sufficient information regarding the other defendant
and, therefore, denies the allegations referring to the other defendant.

And as expected, Paulson has made essentially the same affirmative defenses as Chapterhouse Studios:

This court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over claims to enforce U.S. copyrights for
which GW has not obtained, or has not pleaded ownership of, copyright registrations.
GW's copyright claims are barred because GW lacks standing to enforce copyrights it
does not own.
GW's copyright claims are barred by the doctrine of fair use.
GW's copyright claims are barred by the de minimis doctrine.
GW's copyright claims are barred by the doctrine of independent creation.
GW's claims are barred by its failure to join indispensable parties.
GW's claims are barred by consent, waiver, acquiescence or license.
GW's claims are barred by relevant statutes of limitations.
GW's claims are barred by laches.
GW's claims are barred by res judicata.
GW's claims are barred by estoppel.
GW's claims are barred by the doctrine of copyright misuse.
GW's claims are barred as to any of its actions that violate any unfair competition laws.
GW's claims are barred due to its unclean hands.
GW's claims are barred by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
GW's claims are barred by its failure to mitigate damages.
GW's claims to statutory damages are limited or barred by the United States Constitution.
GW's claims to treble damages are barred because at all times Paulson has acted
without malice and with a good faith belief that its actions were proper.

And he has sought attorney's fees:

Paulson seeks relief as follows:
That the Court enter judgment for Paulson and against GW on all causes of action; That the
Court award Paulson costs of suit, including reasonable attorneys' fees; and
That the Court award such other relief as is just and equitable.

This is pretty much the CHS answer expect that Paulson is of course denying any connection to CHS.

I know this will make me sound like a GW hater but I had to giggle when I read that.

Thanks Weeble.

Just to be clear, you always say all of that stuff in every answer no matter the merits. This is because you have to claim affirmative defenses whether you will actually use them or not because you can lose them otherwise.

Manchu wrote:Just to be clear, you always say all of that stuff in every answer no matter the merits. This is because you have to claim affirmative defenses whether you will actually use them or not because you can lose them otherwise.

There's still the requirement that you have a good faith belief in the truth of the comments submitted.

How Paulson can claim a defense of res judicata is beyond me. Is there another case I'm missing?

(res judicata, or claim preclusion, is invoked when a plaintiff tries to sue a defendant a second time over the same facts, seeking alternative relief.)

Ya, I don't know biccat. Admittedly, there's plenty of facts that we're not aware of. Who knows. The only thing different about the claims made by Paulson and CHS is that Paulson didn't mention state law claims being preempted by federal law and he didn't mention the Lanham Act.

I'd really like to see GW's answers to Chaptehouse's interrogatories, but that's privileged.

Will we see them once the case is settled?

Andrew

No, I don't think so. If the case doesn't settle anytime soon, we'll likely see some of those facts come out in motions to dismiss, motions for summary judgement, and the various memorandums and responses.

What does a court docket contain? Just filings, or does it include transcripts of the court room arguments?

biccat wrote:
How Paulson can claim a defense of res judicata is beyond me. Is there another case I'm missing?

(res judicata, or claim preclusion, is invoked when a plaintiff tries to sue a defendant a second time over the same facts, seeking alternative relief.)

They may have felt some part of GW's claims were too redundant. That something wasn't enough of a separate claim but was notionally stated twice.