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 Kroothawk wrote:
There is a queue

I wonder, if this does go to appeal, how many of those firms or their clients might write amicus briefs explaining how important this case's precedents might be to IP law as a whole.

Saldiven wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
There is a queue

I wonder, if this does go to appeal, how many of those firms or their clients might write amicus briefs explaining how important this case's precedents might be to IP law as a whole.

Same here - particularly in the parts of the tech industry that attempt to strangle competition through aggressive, IP-related litigation. Not to mention what it could mean to literary IP! If nothing else, it certainly has the potential to lob an angry tabby into a nigh-flightless cluster of overweight pigeons.

Noir wrote:

 spaceelf wrote:
I would assume that the chances of appeal on either side are rather slim. There is not enough money involved in the case to take more time in court. Further, the pro bono legal team already made a big announcement on their win. You do not think that they would make such a press release if they thought that it would be overruled on appeal. Lastly, the case went just as predicted by the original judge, both sides will get some wins and some losses and both companies will survive and continue to produce miniatures.

It will be interesting to see GW's legal strategy after this case is settled. I suspect that they will be much more hesitant to go to court.

It has been confirmed other legal firm are willing to take on the appeal pro-bono, do to the far reaching impact this case will have.

Confirmed where? Don't be a tease

Mythal wrote:
If nothing else, it certainly has the potential to lob an angry tabby into a nigh-flightless cluster of overweight pigeons.

Well done, there

CHS has filed a bill of costs to be taxed by the clerk*. These aren't legal fees, these are everyday expenses and the cost of paying for witnesses airplane tickets / hotel rooms during trial. They don't even represent the full range of disbursements, just the ones that are taxable. CHS seems to be dead serious about recovering costs from GW.

*Taxation of costs is a term of art that refers to having a magistrate / registrar or clerk of court review a detailed bill of legal costs to determine whether or not they are appropriate and whether they can be executed against someone. Confusing name, doesn't have anything to do with income tax. It's to protect against lawyers padding the bill or charging for services that weren't actually rendered etc... Sometimes the client will ask to have a bill taxed (if they disagree with the fees they are being charged) and sometimes you get a bill taxed when the other party is forced to pay your legal fees or disbursements.



For folks wondering how expensive litigation is, the bill for printing and photo copies alone is $112k. This is (in part) why news of a 25k judgment was viewed as a drop in the ocean. 25k is a lot of money for a business, but in litigation it is peanuts, they spent more on printer toner and staples.


The exhibits document is 80 pages of receipts


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fun little entry:


3/7/2013 16559 Weidner, Lauren B. 999997 3116 Color Copies $18,717.60 color_print Chicago

Yes, 18k on a single print job.

And here's one that is over 25k:

5/22/2013 16559 Weidner, Lauren B. 999997 3116 Color Copies $26,897.60 email_print Chicago








Automatically Appended Next Post:




Also, there is a minute entry from Judge Gilbert:

MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Telephone status hearing held with counsel for both parties concerning the most recent settlement referral.

The Court's judicial assistant gave counsel dates the Court has available for a settlement conference and the parties will promptly confirm one of those dates and dates for the exchange of settlement letters so that the Court has letters from both parties at least a week before the settlement conference.

As discussed on the telephone call, Plaintiff will tender a settlement letter first.

The parties and counsel shall familiarize themselves with the Court's Standing Order for Settlement Conference available on the Court's webpage at www.ilnd.uscourts/Magistrate Judge Jeffrey T. Gilbert.

In light of this telephonic conference, the status hearing set for 7/24/13 is stricken with no appearance necessary. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 07/18/2013)

czakk wrote:
the bill for printing and photo copies alone is $112k.

This tells me I'm completely in the wrong business.... I knew there was a ton of paperwork involved, but good lord. With those type of prices I think I need to open up a chain of copy centers.

And this is in the 'paperless office' of the future.

I wonder if Judge Gilbert is tempted to tell the litigants, "I told you so."

I wonder if Judge Gilbert has ever been tempted to examine this "Dakka dakka website" to see what people are saying about GW and CH???



Hey Judge tell them "I told you so"

Another Minute entry:

MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Settlement Conference set for 9/16/13 at 1:30 p.m. Plaintiff shall tender its settlement letter to Defendant with a copy to chambers on or before 8/30/13. Defendant shall tender its response to Plaintiff with a copy to chambers on or before 9/9/13. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 07/22/2013)

If this is anything like the mandatory settlement conferences up here nothing will actually be settled. Just a repeat of what happened at the beginning of the case.

czakk wrote:
Another Minute entry:

MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Settlement Conference set for 9/16/13 at 1:30 p.m. Plaintiff shall tender its settlement letter to Defendant with a copy to chambers on or before 8/30/13. Defendant shall tender its response to Plaintiff with a copy to chambers on or before 9/9/13. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 07/22/2013)

If this is anything like the mandatory settlement conferences up here nothing will actually be settled. Just a repeat of what happened at the beginning of the case.

For some reason I just have a mental image of GW management rolling on the floor screaming "make it stop, make it stop". I bet they never thought that this would be going on for so long and suck up so much time. I am also waiting for head of GW legal to announce she is leaving to spend more time with her family after such a poorly orchestrated legal strategy that has costs them so much money and sucked up so much management time.

 fullheadofhair wrote:
For some reason I just have a mental image of GW management rolling on the floor screaming "make it stop, make it stop". I bet they never thought that this would be going on for so long and suck up so much time. I am also waiting for head of GW legal to announce she is leaving to spend more time with her family after such a poorly orchestrated legal strategy that has costs them so much money and sucked up so much management time.

I think it is pretty clear that Games Workshop is fairly inexperienced when it comes to litigation. I haven't tracked down all of the actual lawsuits in which GW is a party in the US, but a basic PACER search through the federal courts only pulls up a handful, and I don't think any of them actually went through to trial, other than the Chapterhouse case.

People inexperienced with such lawsuits seemed surprised that the lawsuit went soooo long, and now that there is a jury verdict those same people seem surprised that it still isn't over. If the parties don't settle out, the whole thing could go on longer still if either party decides to appeal, and I believe Chapterhouse Studios has expressed an intention to appeal.

The sad part is that this whole thing could go away if the parties would settle the dispute.

This is what the owner of CHS said about settlement on BOLS:

CHS made numerous attempts to give GW a way out without going to courts, with a fair settlement in mind for both sides for the whole 2.5 years of the case, yet they never tried to have a reasonable settlement (their offer was go away and die and not make anything that is compatible with our products at all).

GW did make a settlement offer 1 month before the trial (up till that point they had no interest at all in settling besides stop everything you do and go away).

Which of course reminds me of what Judge Gilbert said way back in September of 2011:

THE COURT: And so let's say for the sake of argument and only for the sake of argument and not as any finding or anything else that for at least some of your items you're going to be able to show they're substantially similar and you're going to be able to put together whatever circumstantial or even direct evidence in terms of the types of things you're asking for from the defendant of copying, okay? And for others it's going to be a little bit dicier. You're not going to be able to show that they're that similar and you're not going to be able to -- and maybe the defendant is going to be able to articulate from whatever diaries he has or whatever that he came up with the Shakespeare sonnet pretty much on his own and it's going to be a bit of a reach. But let say you're going to win on some of this stuff after you go through all your discovery. What then? If Games Workshop Limited's goal is to put Chapterhouse Studios out of business, a death knell, cease and desist, go away, die, and pay us whatever you can of our attorneys' fees, then you're right, there is no basis to sit down and settle this case. However, if you would like to work out some agreement with Chapterhouse Studios, and I haven't yet heard whether Chapterhouse is willing to do that, short of "We'll go away roll up and die," but that allows both of you to go on and attempt to continue to operate in the areas, the space that you're operating in in some way without one or the other having to give up, in the world I live that's called a settlement, right?

Now the parties are going to be right back in front of Judge Gilbert again, only this time, it is a plain fact that as of right now Chapterhouse Studios is allowed to sell more than 100 products Games Workshop accused of infringement and is able to use dozens of asserted marks to advertise its products.

Which reminds me of another thing Judge Gilbert said:

I mean, I will tell you I had a trademark case last, a couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, that was very -- it was also a zero sum game, it was very hotly fought. The principals came in, the settlement discussion for hours was very hot, but in sitting with both parties I learned that the principals really had a lot of animosity against each other because of some prelitigation telephone calls that were had and things that were said on those calls. And one of the principals took it upon himself to say to the other principal, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about how I reacted when we had a phone call. I'm sorry for saying that I was going to bury you, that I was going to put you out of business, that this was going to cost you too much and you could not fight us. And I have respect for your business, your plan, your model and I would like to try and resolve this." The case got resolved.

Given the jury verdict and rulings by the court, is Games Workshop going to be willing to say, "I'm sorry for saying that I was going to bury you, that I was going to put you out of business, that this was going to cost you too much and you could not fight us. And I have respect for your business, your plan, your model and I would like to try and resolve this." If Games Workshop is not willing to say that, well, in the words of Judge Gilbert:

So defendant is going to get some ruling someplace from Judge Kennelly if this goes all the way through that you don't have any protectable interest in certain of your works. You know, there may be some figures, there may be some other things if you get into a battle on this, that lo and behold Chapterhouse, which has a profitable business on this, there is going to be a ruling on the record public in federal district court in Chicago that you don't have rights to certain things that you're now asserting rights in.

Judge Kennelly still hasn't ruled on those JMOL motions.

This has been a very good read. I wonder if it will be another 2 years before all the appeals are out of the way.....

 warriorpriest wrote:
This has been a very good read. I wonder if it will be another 2 years before all the appeals are out of the way.....

The Microsoft/Apple GUI case went somewhere around 10 years, and in the end all that happened was Microsoft settled with Apple to buy a large chunk of Apple stock. Without a settlement, they normally run several years and a few more for the appeals process to run (whether itnis dealing with the claims themselves or other parts of the case...who may or may not be stuck with how much of the bill for example).

GW has submitted its costs motion. $177k

GW made a mention of sorts about intellectual property in their financials.

GW wrote:
Breach of intellectual property (IP) and counterfeit products. The risk is that we lose control of our IP and thus other people can take our market. There are two ways we mitigate this risk: product quality and IP protection. Product quality is the best defence. Our miniatures are of extraordinary detail and have very high costs associated with their production. We do the tooling and manufacturing here in Nottingham to ensure that quality. As it happens, even if we wanted to tool or manufacture elsewhere, we have never found anyone who can deliver the quality we need at the price we pay. In order to be able to duplicate that quality requires a level of capital investment that no one has, as yet, even tried to emulate. This also deals with the risk of counterfeit products.The few that are made are of poor quality and do not appeal to our customers.
Should that change, or we meet intransigent small infringers, we have copyright, trademark and passing off law to protect our imagery and we have never been shy of using legal redress if needed. Our legal department deals with dozens of cases each year with satisfactory results.
The scale upon which we do business is the biggest defence against this threat. The cases we deal with (and there are dozens each year) are nearly all single individuals or small businesses who ‘cease and desist’ as soon as they get the letter. Those who don’t should be stopped more because we need to ensure everyone knows we are serious about defending our IP rather than because of the immediate threat of damage to our profits.

You would never know that they just spent seven figures losing 75% of the counts in a suit over their IP.

If you read Mr Keener's memorandum, he makes it clear that their victories were "multitude".

Was the result against Chapterhouse 'satisfactory'?


Also their comment about how they deliver the best and counterfeiters are marked by poorer quality. The sad thing is that some counterfeiters are offering more reliability than what Finecast and Forgeworld deliver. People don't often like to talk about buying counterfeit miniatures or admit they have, but it's not uncommon among those that have to say they're better than GW.

Trasvi wrote:
GW made a mention of sorts about intellectual property in their financials.

GW wrote:
Our legal department deals with dozens of cases each year with satisfactory results.
The scale upon which we do business is the biggest defence against this threat. The cases we deal with (and there are dozens each year) are nearly all single individuals or small businesses who ‘cease and desist’ as soon as they get the letter. Those who don’t should be stopped more because we need to ensure everyone knows we are serious about defending our IP rather than because of the immediate threat of damage to our profits.

HAHAHA! That's awesome! Wow, this is GREAT NEWS!

Hey, guess what GW investors, TAKE A LOOK! So, GW didn't "stop" Chapterhouse Studios, and communicated only that they know how to spend seven figures restricting their claimed intellectual property rights, encouraging the expansion of the third party accessory market, and proving that they can't litigate themselves out of a paper bag. Holy crap.

If you're going to spin this catastrophe GW, try harder, 'cause that aint it.

Trasvi wrote:
GW made a mention of sorts about intellectual property in their financials.

GW wrote:
Breach of intellectual property (IP) and counterfeit products. The risk is that we lose control of our IP and thus other people can take our market. There are two ways we mitigate this risk: product quality and IP protection. Product quality is the best defence. Our miniatures are of extraordinary detail and have very high costs associated with their production. We do the tooling and manufacturing here in Nottingham to ensure that quality. As it happens, even if we wanted to tool or manufacture elsewhere, we have never found anyone who can deliver the quality we need at the price we pay. In order to be able to duplicate that quality requires a level of capital investment that no one has, as yet, even tried to emulate. This also deals with the risk of counterfeit products.The few that are made are of poor quality and do not appeal to our customers.
Should that change, or we meet intransigent small infringers, we have copyright, trademark and passing off law to protect our imagery and we have never been shy of using legal redress if needed. Our legal department deals with dozens of cases each year with satisfactory results.
The scale upon which we do business is the biggest defence against this threat. The cases we deal with (and there are dozens each year) are nearly all single individuals or small businesses who ‘cease and desist’ as soon as they get the letter. Those who don’t should be stopped more because we need to ensure everyone knows we are serious about defending our IP rather than because of the immediate threat of damage to our profits.

You would never know that they just spent seven figures losing 75% of the counts in a suit over their IP.

So finecast didn't happen, and we didn't need to sue chapterhouse because our customers won't buy their products. It's all been a bad dream

GW wrote:
Should that change, or we meet intransigent small infringers, we have copyright, trademark and passing off law to protect our imagery and we have never been shy of using legal redress if needed. Our legal department deals with dozens of cases each year with satisfactory results.
The scale upon which we do business is the biggest defence against this threat. The cases we deal with (and there are dozens each year) are nearly all single individuals or small businesses who ‘cease and desist’ as soon as they get the letter. Those who don’t should be stopped more because we need to ensure everyone knows we are serious about defending our IP rather than because of the immediate threat of damage to our profits.

Translation: "We are an IP bully."

GW wrote:The risk is that we lose control of our IP and thus other people can take our market.

No, that's not the risk of someone using your IP. That's your misunderstanding of what its original intent was.

weeble1000 wrote:
Hey, guess what GW investors, TAKE A LOOK! So, GW didn't "stop" Chapterhouse Studios, and communicated only that they know how to spend seven figures restricting their claimed intellectual property rights, encouraging the expansion of the third party accessory market, and proving that they can't litigate themselves out of a paper bag. Holy crap.

If you're going to spin this catastrophe GW, try harder, 'cause that aint it.

For some reason, I read this post in a strong accent, especially the "Hooooooooo-Ly Crap" part

GW wrote:As it happens, even if we wanted to tool or manufacture elsewhere, we have never found anyone who can deliver the quality we need at the price we pay. In order to be able to duplicate that quality requires a level of capital investment that no one has, as yet, even tried to emulate.

Meaning they can't find people to make the stuff for less than peanuts? I think their withdrawal from China had much more to do with excess product sneaking out of warehouses and into secondary channels rather than how much you have to pay Chinese (or Indian workers) I don't think people in the UK are willing to work for 45 cents an hour. But the trade off is they can enforce better internal security in the UK.

Also in regard to investments in plastic it seems to me that Dreamforge and Wargames Factory are certainly attempting to break through that barrier. They might not be there yet in terms of offering a huge expansive range but the quality is there depending on which kits you look at. The quality of Dreamforge's stuff in particular supasses a lot of what GW sells. GW always likes to keep their head in the sand and shovels a load of manure down their investors throats in these reports, but sooner or later they'll realize that saying "La La La I can't hear you!" isn't a viable way to dealing with losing ground to the rest of the gaming industry.

 RiTides wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Hey, guess what GW investors, TAKE A LOOK! So, GW didn't "stop" Chapterhouse Studios, and communicated only that they know how to spend seven figures restricting their claimed intellectual property rights, encouraging the expansion of the third party accessory market, and proving that they can't litigate themselves out of a paper bag. Holy crap.

If you're going to spin this catastrophe GW, try harder, 'cause that aint it.

For some reason, I read this post in a strong accent, especially the "Hooooooooo-Ly Crap" part

I may have blurted it out in a strong accent when I read that in the report. That is a crazy thing to put in the report. First of all, it tells investors that the company is willing to spend money litigating when the company's profits are not impacted. Second, it communicates that the company does not actually have a decent handle on what "IP" means. Third, it communicates that the company's litigation department does little else other than bully individuals and small businesses. Fourth, and worst of all, for anyone who even takes a modicum of effort to look into Games Workshop's history of litigation, the statement seems like a half-arsed spin job at best, and at worst, an attempt to gloss over and conceal a spectacularly expensive failure to successfully enforce the company's alleged "IP."

The first time, I repeat first time that Games Workshop sued an "intransigent small infringer," it provoked a years long, incredibly expensive period of litigation against multiple top US law firms working pro bono, probably because GW's legal team bullies individuals and small companies who have no impact on Games Workshop's profits.

Do we know if the shareholders, the big players, actually know what a farce this case was for GW?

 Wolfstan wrote:
Do we know if the shareholders, the big players, actually know what a farce this case was for GW?

Who knows, quote from annual report

"We have also had a shift in the balance of our owners. For three entirely different reasons each of our largest holders has done some selling. "

 loki old fart wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Do we know if the shareholders, the big players, actually know what a farce this case was for GW?

Who knows, quote from annual report

"We have also had a shift in the balance of our owners. For three entirely different reasons each of our largest holders has done some selling. "

How much and who is buying, is what i would like to know.

xxvaderxx wrote:

 loki old fart wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Do we know if the shareholders, the big players, actually know what a farce this case was for GW?

Who knows, quote from annual report

"We have also had a shift in the balance of our owners. For three entirely different reasons each of our largest holders has done some selling. "

How much and who is buying, is what i would like to know.

Yes, but why is also a good question.

 loki old fart wrote:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Do we know if the shareholders, the big players, actually know what a farce this case was for GW?

Who knows, quote from annual report

"We have also had a shift in the balance of our owners. For three entirely different reasons each of our largest holders has done some selling. "

being a publicly traded company I would assume it wouldnt be to hard to determine the who and how much