Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Reading between the lines, part of the problem at GW was the "group think" culture that allowed the head of USA to go off on one without anyone telling him his ideas were legally weak. So GW need a new head of legal who can stand up to the possible bullying from know-nothing managers.

Does anyone know if there has been a change who "leads" GW USA? AFAIK it is still the former female secretary, who is a strawman for Tom Kirby without any qualifications for the job.

weeble1000 wrote:

Now, normally in a corporation, senior corporate counsel will cover her posterior. Gill did that. She hired expensive outside counsel, for example, and threw gobs of money at the case. Traditionally, that's a way for corporate counsel to defer blame. "Look, you told me to sue that guy. Well, I hired the best lawyers and we worked the crap out of the case. I did my job. I hired the best, we spent tons of money, and we lost. It isn't because I did something wrong. I did what you told me to do."

Now, that brings into sharp relief the context of her leaving Games Workshop. Gill is not what I would call "easily replaceable." She took steps to cover her butt. And she ate the blame nonetheless. Thus, one can reasonably infer that Games Workshop feels that filing the lawsuit in the first place was a critical error. It is in this context that a corporation goes headhunting in the in house legal department. It is in this context that senior in house counsel get's asked, "Why the Hell didn't you say this was a terrible idea in the first place?"

Only in hindsight can anyone (including GW) reasonably infer that Games Workshop feels that filing the lawsuit in the first place was a critical error.
SOP until this suit was: file suit, defendant backs down, GW is happy. No one has ever challenged GW's IP using quality legal representation before. Gill got caught between GW management's absurd sense of "reality" and a very professional defense team. She was in way over her head professionally as we saw throughout the case. I'm doubting that any lawyer alive could have survived this case with reputation and job intact given GW management's irrationality.

Tim

timd wrote:

Only in hindsight can anyone (including GW) reasonably infer that Games Workshop feels that filing the lawsuit in the first place was a critical error.
SOP until this suit was: file suit, defendant backs down, GW is happy. No one has ever challenged GW's IP using quality legal representation before. Gill got caught between GW management's absurd sense of "reality" and a very professional defense team. She was in way over her head professionally as we saw throughout the case. I'm doubting that any lawyer alive could have survived this case with reputation and job intact given GW management's irrationality.

Tim

Yes, I agree with the sentiment with a few qualifications.

First, once things go pear-shaped and the blame game starts, people can get very unreasonable and yes, can ignore things like at the moment the lawsuit was filed, there should have been every expectation that said defendant simply folded up his tent and fled in the face of the oncoming horde.

Second, you should keep in mind that the act of filing some sort of lawsuit is not the same as deciding to file the lawsuit as it was filed. As filed, the lawsuit was grossly overreaching and involved the assertion of rights Games Workshop did not even have the documentation to back up, which one can easily say is Gill Stevenson's fault, as she was responsible, per her linkedin page, "for the Product Archive of 30 years of products." See, the filing of any lawsuit should really have been enough to hurt Chapterhouse enough to close up shop, and with the benefit of hindsight, one could say that the massive nature of the suit is exactly what drew Winston and Strawn into the game.

Third, there were any number of points at which Games Workshop could have extricated itself from the suit, all of which were passed up by, arguably, Gill Stevenson. These are things like the September 2011 status conference during which Magistrate Judge Gilbert said this little gem:

"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."

...

"I think it would be a shame for both sides here, one side is paying their lawyers, one side is doing it for free, but it seems to me both sides have risk in the litigation and it can be an extremely expensive litigation..."

I bolded the particularly relevant portions.

Anyone looking at that might say, "Well Hell, Gill, the man warned you straight up that it would be an extremely costly litigation and that we might lose protectable interest in Games Workshop's property. That's exactly what happened. You knew in September 2011 that this would happen. What in almighty God were you thinking? You never mentioned that to me. You never told me about that. Maybe I would have changed my mind about this litigation if you had been honest with me. This is all your fault."

And then what about sticking in the game once Winston & Strawn came in, and what about refusing to settle once Marshall, Gerstein & Borun come in, and what about refusing to settle once the Judge dismissed half of the copyright claims with prejudice, and what about sticking with it when your lead outside counsel was sanctioned for discovery abuse? Again, once you start looking at a case with a set of we're-buried-in-a-pile-of-doohickey glasses, it is easy to find lots of mistakes to blame people for.

Another point of consideration on just how badly things went for GW, they'd handpicked the Chicago courts as being the most favorable to their complaints. When they get such a mixed result in a court of their own choosing it shows just how badly they buggered things up as the ball should have been in GW's court.

I can only imagine how things would have gone down if GW had tried this BS in Texas.

Things were off to a rosey start when the judge hung up on GW's head rep at Foley during the first pre-trial meeting, you would think they would have realized at that point they better get their case together rather than showboat. But apparently even when there's massive costs on the line GW prefers the Full-Derp approach to everything.

Presumably GW's management believed that nearly all of their claims were as strong as required to win.

Which to many outsiders did not look to be true right at the beginning of the whole affair.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Presumably GW's management believed that nearly all of their claims were as strong as required to win.

Which to many outsiders did not look to be true right at the beginning of the whole affair.

But do they think that now is the question. Does a company that thinks it did the right thing and lost anyway fire its senior legal counsel?

I shouldn't have thought so.

The failure can't be ascribed to a perverse jury or other factor that couldn't have been predicted. (If anything, the jury was IMO rather favourable to GW.)

Therefore it was a Legal or more strictly a general managerial failure.

Firing the head lawyer is a way of saying the problem has been dealt, but actually it hasn't. We may yet see departures from higher management too.

This case makes me sad that I enjoy GW games.

 kirsanth wrote:
This case makes me sad that I enjoy GW games.

Don't be sad. A game is just a game. The game did not sue Chapterhouse Studios, Games Workshop did. The game has no anima.

But if you disapprove of Games Workshop, you can always choose to stop rewarding the company's behavior with your continued business. It doesn't mean you have to stop enjoying the game, it just becomes a bit more difficult to do so.

In any case, I don't think anyone would seriously hold it against you if you remained a Games Workshop customer.

timd wrote:
Only in hindsight can anyone (including GW) reasonably infer that Games Workshop feels that filing the lawsuit in the first place was a critical error.

Well, from the start two things were clear:
1.) Accusing a person completely unrelated to Chapterhouse (Paulson) to have sculpted for Chapterhouse, where just reading the photo of the concerned model would have given the right direction, is an error so dumb it hurts.
2.) Filing an IP suit without presenting the necessary documents on holding the copyright is either dumb or a concious attempt to break the law. As it turned out, GW had no idea what copyright and trademarks are, retracted the most ridiculous claims and tried to obtain the missing copyrights by shady methods one year after filing the suit.
3.) It was also clear from the start that GW's attempt to criminalize 2nd market products per se in the USA is not a good idea.

There's a managerial failure here *as well as* the legal team failure. I mean -- we all knew exactly what the judge said 2 years ago about the likely cost, and likely poor result for GW. One would like to think that GW's upper management had at least as close an interest in the case as we did.

Blood of Kittens just posted an article about Gill leaving GW.

Not much new there, really, but interesting. If Gill was so worried about dawn raids during her time at GW, that could lend credence to the rumors of a GW buyout.

Weeble, I'm curious as a non-lawyery person: Are dawn raids normally conducted by the government, or by other companies?

Another company can't do that to you. Just like your neighbour can't knock on your door and demand to see your bank statements.

It's government inspectors doing their jobs enforcing the law.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Something about Attitude over Skills, or something like that...

I always found it interesting, and this says something important about GW, that ineffective employees that aren't a good fit with GW get training to improve themselves but effective employees who aren't a good fit need to be removed.

Why can't they give effective employees who aren't a good fit training in order to be a good fit? Surely if an employee who isn't effective nor a good fit is given training and can become an effective, good fit employee than an effective employee can also be given training to be a good fit.

Good fit needs to be defined here. GW doesn't mean good fit with GW culture as in knowledge of the games and love of wargaming etc. It means good fit with other staff. At least that's what I learned during my experience at GW.

You can be a highly effective, good fit employee one day and the next after one manager changes out you are no longer a good fit. Usually what I saw there was very experienced staff being used as a human "Look out Sir" rule for managers who weren't very effective, but were much more devious.

How do we know what advice she gave the upper managers/board about the lawsuit? Maybe she told them it was a mistake and not to proceed at this time and they just didn't want to hear it. They might have had that GW brainwashing as well, "We will win because we say we're right" attitude.

She may have been given instructions to proceed and did the best she could.

Her being used as a scapegoat for other manager's/board member's decisions I think is far more likely. I saw that all to often at GW. Good people being run out of the company for B/S reasons by managers who were just more devious and conniving.

 darkPrince010 wrote:
Weeble, I'm curious as a non-lawyery person: Are dawn raids normally conducted by the government, or by other companies?

Dawn raids can refer to companies or individuals buying shares early in the morning in order to make a takeover more cheaply, or HMRC, the plod or any other regulatory bodies turning up and demanding to look at the paperwork without warning. I think that GS 's linkedin refers to the latter, but tastytaste to the former, which is confusing. Also in the UK, unemployment has been falling for the last two years and we haven't been in a recession for four years (the double dip of 2012 has been revised away). Poor, must try harder.

I'm inclined to agree with Holdenstein that it's regulatory related. I would expect a company of GW's size to have the share-related version driven by an outside financial consultant rather than an in-house lawyer.

Two things come to mind, hm gov probably has little interest in GW. So GW must be concerned about a takeover, how to avoid it or maximise the income from it.

"Negotiated successful outcomes in a variety of commercial disputes in many territories,
including negotiating with Trading Standards in the UK, to avoid product recalls."

Maybe the new releases been plastic, was not entirely by choice. failcast anyone

Re: Product recalls, didn't the spray gun have to be recalled/have issues which delayed release.

These are the latest minute entries from the docket:

10/04/2013 436 MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Continued telephonic settlement discussions held with both parties. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 10/04/2013)

10/07/2013 437 MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Telephone conference with Defendant's counsel concerning settlement negoations held on 10/7/13. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 10/07/2013)

10/07/2013 438 MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Telephone conference held with Plaintiff's counsel concerning settlement negotiations on 10/7/13. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 10/08/2013)

10/09/2013 439 MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Continued settlement discussions held telephonically with counsel for both parties. All agree that, at this point, the settlement discussions are not not likely to be successful. Accordingly, the parties are will turn their attention to post-trial matters before the District Judge. The settlement referral will remain open in the event the parties would like to reconvene with the Magistrate Judge to pursue settlement of this case. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 10/09/2013)

10/10/2013 440 MINUTE entry before the Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly: Rule 16(b) status hearing held on 10/10/2013 with attorneys for both sides. Supplement to joint status report regarding injunction is to be filed by 10/22/2013. Briefs opposing post trial motions and bills of costs are due by 10/24/2013; replies are due by 11/7/2013. Status hearing set for 11/7/2013 at 09:30 a.m. Mailed notice. (pjg, ) (Entered: 10/10/2013)

Rule 16(b) just means a scheduling hearing, during which those dates were discussed with the parties and scheduled by the court.

weeble1000 wrote:


10/09/2013 439 MINUTE entry before Honorable Jeffrey T. Gilbert: Continued settlement discussions held telephonically with counsel for both parties. All agree that, at this point, the settlement discussions are not not likely to be successful. Accordingly, the parties are will turn their attention to post-trial matters before the District Judge. The settlement referral will remain open in the event the parties would like to reconvene with the Magistrate Judge to pursue settlement of this case. Mailed notice (mr, ) (Entered: 10/09/2013)

10/10/2013 440 MINUTE entry before the Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly: Rule 16(b) status hearing held on 10/10/2013 with attorneys for both sides. Supplement to joint status report regarding injunction is to be filed by 10/22/2013. Briefs opposing post trial motions and bills of costs are due by 10/24/2013; replies are due by 11/7/2013. Status hearing set for 11/7/2013 at 09:30 a.m. Mailed notice. (pjg, ) (Entered: 10/10/2013)

First...so this isn't over by a long shot? And second, are we likely to see more delays with post trial motions by GW as we did in even getting to heart of what specific infringing products they were upset about, or in your opinion have they learned their lesson about clarity when it comes to the court system?

 derek wrote:


First...so this isn't over by a long shot? And second, are we likely to see more delays with post trial motions by GW as we did in even getting to heart of what specific infringing products they were upset about, or in your opinion have they learned their lesson about clarity when it comes to the court system?

I think most available evidence suggests that Games Workshop almost never learns a lesson about anything, but there's really no way to know what GW is thinking about the process.

The schedule for post-trial motion practice will be dictated by the court, as you can see from the most recent minute entry. It just comes down to what sort of timetable Judge Kennelly prefers to work on. However, once final judgment is entered, the FRCP requires a notice of appeal to be filed within 30 days I believe. So if either party intends to file an appeal, that's the time table you are looking at to find out.

The parties filed a joint status report regarding an injunction prior to the settlement conference, back on July 15th. The court made no determination on an injunction, and has now requested the parties file an updated joint status report regarding injunctions. The court must rule on an injunction, and there are also motions for both costs and renewed JMOL motions from both parties that will have to be ruled on by the court, likely preceded by opposition and reply briefs. There could also be motions for fees thrown into the mix.

The court has scheduled oppositions to the parties' cost motions and replies that go all the way out to November 7th. The process is: Party A motions, Party B opposes the motion, Party A replies to Party B's opposition. That is what oppositions and replies refers to. The court could also decide to hear oral arguments on any of these motions.

As yet, the parties have not filed oppositions to the renewed JMOL motions, and the court has not scheduled that as far as I can tell from the docket. It seems that the court will address the issue of costs prior to taking up renewed JMOL motions. The renewed JMOL motions are where a lot of action could be as both parties have motions filed that, if granted in full, could find the case one way or the other, i.e. GW is arguing to set aside all adverse jury verdicts and CHS is arguing for the same. The court may deny the motions, grant one or the other in full, or grant one and/or the other in part.

I don't think final judgment is entered until the court rules on the renewed JMOL motions, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, considering that the motions for costs wont be briefed in full until the 7th, it could very well be January before Judge Kennelly rules on the JMOL motions. However, it all depends on Judge Kennelly. Technically, he could rule on everything this afternoon if he felt like it, but it is reasonable to assume that there will at least be opposition briefs to the renewed JMOL motions, and probably reply briefs, with the parties given at least a week to prepare each one (and possibly longer), plus time for the court to consider them, hence my January ballpark.

It would make sense (to me) to rule on the JMOL stuff and have a final judgment before ruling on costs.

czakk wrote:
It would make sense (to me) to rule on the JMOL stuff and have a final judgment before ruling on costs.

It sure would, wouldn't it. Judge Kennelly may indeed do that, though he has ordered briefing on costs, and not on JMOL.

FRCP ? JMOL?

Who won?It doesn't say and I'm not going through 50 pages..

Da krimson barun wrote:
Who won?It doesn't say and I'm not going through 50 pages..

GW won on some claims, CHS won on others. CHS won on the vast majority so you could say that CHS won overall, but then GW got awarded damages (but a vastly reduced amount than what they initially wanted), so you could say that GW won on that regard...

The only thing that we know for sure is that the head of GW's legal team definitely lost!

 Kroothawk wrote:
FRCP ? JMOL?

FRCP = Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

JMOL = Judgment as a Matter of Law


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Da krimson barun wrote:
Who won?It doesn't say and I'm not going through 50 pages..

GW's goal was always to put Chapterhouse Studios out of business. GW has argued, and continues to argue post trial, that making accessories for GW products in any context is inherently wrong, against the law, and not a legitimate form of business.

GW has thus far utterly failed to achieve this goal. In other words, it aint over yet, but unless something radically changes in GW's favor, GW lost, and spent probably a million dollars doing so.

Da krimson barun wrote:
Who won?It doesn't say and I'm not going through 50 pages..

Jury spoke, but this lawsuit is not yet over until the judge says so. Then there might be a revision, but only if GW finds a good legal reason.

GW lost a million bucks?I already know their plan....Up the prices!