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xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Dheneb wrote:
Does anyone think there's any chance of GW backing down and settling, now that there are some pretty big names coming to the table?

That would be the smart thing to do, which is why GW will double down and try anything to salvage the unsalvagable.

"Salvage the unsalvagable"? I don't know if you noticed but CHS lost the case. If you get tried with 20 counts of burglary and get found guilt of 10, the guy who's house you burgled won't give up just because the other guy has big names on his side.

Unless there's something I'm not aware of that would mean CHS was not guilty or that GW was about to lose the case or something, which I haven't seen.

Yeah no. GW lost this.
**Edit, as Kilkrazy said below it's still in appeals, all I am saying it that so far this is how it has shaped up**

It was proven that GW do not in fact own the trademarks on even a quarter of the things they say they do. GWs layers failed to put Chapterhouse out of business and in fact laid out a nice set of guidelines for any other bits makers to follow in the future rather than scare them. GW exposed to the world that they DO NOT OWN THE TRADEMARK ON THEIR ICONIC SHOULDERPADS.
GW wanted to shut down the after markets bitz market but instead they strengthened it. This was an embarrassing loss for them.

As Baragash pointed out this is not a criminal law case, having the jury side with GW on 1 count does not mean CH lost, especially when the jury sided with them for over 2/3rds of the issues that actually made it to trial (and a LOT were dropped before that).

You can't argue GW won this.

xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Dheneb wrote:
Does anyone think there's any chance of GW backing down and settling, now that there are some pretty big names coming to the table?

That would be the smart thing to do, which is why GW will double down and try anything to salvage the unsalvagable.

"Salvage the unsalvagable"? I don't know if you noticed but CHS lost the case. If you get tried with 20 counts of burglary and get found guilt of 10, the guy who's house you burgled won't give up just because the other guy has big names on his side.

Unless there's something I'm not aware of that would mean CHS was not guilty or that GW was about to lose the case or something, which I haven't seen.

Since it wasn't burglary, and anyway it is still in appeals, your point is worthless.

 silent25 wrote:
So the firm that led the failed defense of Apple's rounded corner patent is now leading the fight against another firm claiming generic geometric shapes? Someone is calling the kettle black.

Well, this is off topic, of course, and a rather unfair characterization. Apple won a 1.05 billion dollar verdict, so it is really hard to say that Apple's counsel failed. One of the many patents asserted was a design patent that specified rounded corners, among a combination of many specific design elements such as the home button, the placement of buttons, the edge to edge black glass, etc., This patent was not found to have been infringed. Neither was said design patent found to be invalid, merely not infringed. This finding of the jury nevertheless resulted in a 1.05 billion dollar verdict.

Feel how you like about design patents, but Apple asserted a design patent granted by the USPTO, which carries a presumption of validity. The jury made a decision about it. That's that. It was a small part of the case, and demonstrably insignificant to the damages award. Personally, I think comparing Apple's assertion of a design patent to, say, Games Workshop's assertion of an unspecifically slanted barrel shroud attached to anything vaguely gun-shaped is patently unfair, pun intended to lighten the mood.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

 Dheneb wrote:
Does anyone think there's any chance of GW backing down and settling, now that there are some pretty big names coming to the table?

I doubt the other party would be willing to settle now, unless it was quite substantial.

Good point, from my (admittedly limited) understanding of how the case currently stands chapterhouse has no reason to listen even if GW wanted to settle.

GW have acted like bossy children determined to get their way from the get go, if I where in CHs shoes and GW offered a reasonable settlement I wouldn't take it out of spite.

Don't forget that Nick Villacci has stated that he would prefer to settle, and that he had settlement discussions with Games Workshop with offers on the table right up until the jury verdict came in, and we know the parties negotiated settlement in the past month or so. And also don't forget that it was of Games Workshop that Judge Gilbert said that if you consider this a zero sum game, go away, die, and pay us whatever you can of our attorneys' fees, there's no basis for settlement.

The extant evidence suggests it is Games Workshop that is unwilling to settle. In fact, Games Workshop's lead counsel has stated, for example, that a license is a non-starter. So what we actually know about points to Games Workshop taking things off of the table, rather than looking to settle. I'm sure if any of you were in a years long legal battle, you would rather it just be over so you could get along with your life.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Dheneb wrote:
Does anyone think there's any chance of GW backing down and settling, now that there are some pretty big names coming to the table?

That would be the smart thing to do, which is why GW will double down and try anything to salvage the unsalvagable.

"Salvage the unsalvagable"? I don't know if you noticed but CHS lost the case. If you get tried with 20 counts of burglary and get found guilt of 10, the guy who's house you burgled won't give up just because the other guy has big names on his side.

Unless there's something I'm not aware of that would mean CHS was not guilty or that GW was about to lose the case or something, which I haven't seen.

More like 10 and 3. And a civil case is not the same as a criminal case. Neither Chapterhouse Studios nor Games Workshop are criminals. This is a case about competitors in a market. There is no "victim," though one can make a fine case that if there were a victim, it would be Chapterhouse Studios and Nick Villacci as Games Workshop has stated multiple times that Games Workshop has not suffered harm to its business as a result of Chapterhouse Studios.

xruslanx wrote:

"Salvage the unsalvagable"? I don't know if you noticed but CHS lost the case. If you get tried with 20 counts of burglary and get found guilt of 10, the guy who's house you burgled won't give up just because the other guy has big names on his side.

Unless there's something I'm not aware of that would mean CHS was not guilty or that GW was about to lose the case or something, which I haven't seen.

To make a more apt criminal comparison:..

Games Workshop: We accuse CHS of 12 counts of murder in the first degree, 14 counts of armed theft of Federation property, 22 counts of piracy in high space, 18 counts of fraud, 37 counts of rape and one moving violation.

Foreman of the Jury: we find CHS innocent of all charges, save the moving violation, which we find them guilty and sentence them to pay a $50 fine.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

"Salvage the unsalvagable"? I don't know if you noticed but CHS lost the case. If you get tried with 20 counts of burglary and get found guilt of 10, the guy who's house you burgled won't give up just because the other guy has big names on his side.

Unless there's something I'm not aware of that would mean CHS was not guilty or that GW was about to lose the case or something, which I haven't seen.

To make a more apt criminal comparison:..

Games Workshop: We accuse CHS of 12 counts of murder in the first degree, 14 counts of armed theft of Federation property, 22 counts of piracy in high space, 18 counts of fraud, 37 counts of rape and one moving violation.

Foreman of the Jury: we find CHS innocent of all charges, save the moving violation, which we find them guilty and sentence them to pay a $50 fine.

Games Workshop: We won!

I am more inclined to think of it as a poker game -
GW had to buy a deck to get into the game, Chapterhouse got in free.
GW then lost two out of three games, and wasn't even allowed to play in some others. (You do know that is a Pinochle deck, don't you? You'll have to sit this one out.)

Now they want to play the same games again, using the same cards, and expect to win?...

It would really, really help if the folks at GW were playing according to Hoyle, but they have very little idea of how the game is even played. (No, you can't yell 'Go fish!'...)

That the person in charge of their IP did not know the difference between Trademark and Copyright... and may be a bit shaky on Trade Dress....

The Auld Grump

You can't really compare criminal and civil proceedings; apples and oranges. Sure, they're both share some characteristics but you can't say "win" or "lose" clearly like in criminal proceedings.

How do you keep score? Number of counts guilty vs. innocent?The number of items that Chapterhouse was found to be infringing was miniscule when compared to the number of items brought against them.
Money spent/lost? Chapterhouse was found to be infringing on a small number of items and the bill came up to about $25k sure but it cost GW, at best guess, several hundred thousand dollars (at least) to get that $25k. In he process they lost control of a great number of items that they've been able to bully small parts makers out of business over. So, who was hurt more? Chapterhouse stays in business and gets to continue making the majority of their goods that GW hated them being able to AND other bits makers are now protected if they make similar products.

Yeah, Chapterhouse won and so did every small-time GW compatible bit maker in the hobby.

I'm glad for this decision. In my opinion there are a lot of really artistic types in this hobby who probably know how to make some amazing accessories for GW mini's, but they don't because they don't want to be sued. This should open the door to allow those people to put up legitimate websites to sell great products. For instance I didn't even know about chapterhouse before reading this thread, but since going on their website I've found some amazing stuff that I've ordered.

weeble1000 wrote:

More like 10 and 3. And a civil case is not the same as a criminal case. Neither Chapterhouse Studios nor Games Workshop are criminals. This is a case about competitors in a market. There is no "victim," though one can make a fine case that if there were a victim, it would be Chapterhouse Studios and Nick Villacci as Games Workshop has stated multiple times that Games Workshop has not suffered harm to its business as a result of Chapterhouse Studios.

Right but being guilty of *any* amount of crimes still makes you guilty. If Nick Vallacci didn't want to lose his business he shouldn't have started making money by illegally exploiting other company's IP. A lot of people seem to be assuming this will "damage" GW in some way but realistically, the number of people who have heard of this case, and the number of *them* who decide to check out CHS after reading about it, and the number of *them* who'll pay a few bucks for some shoulder pads...well it's not that large. Certainly not large enough to pay for the $25k fine.

xruslanx wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

More like 10 and 3. And a civil case is not the same as a criminal case. Neither Chapterhouse Studios nor Games Workshop are criminals. This is a case about competitors in a market. There is no "victim," though one can make a fine case that if there were a victim, it would be Chapterhouse Studios and Nick Villacci as Games Workshop has stated multiple times that Games Workshop has not suffered harm to its business as a result of Chapterhouse Studios.

Right but being guilty of *any* amount of crimes still makes you guilty. If Nick Vallacci didn't want to lose his business he shouldn't have started making money by illegally exploiting other company's IP. A lot of people seem to be assuming this will "damage" GW in some way but realistically, the number of people who have heard of this case, and the number of *them* who decide to check out CHS after reading about it, and the number of *them* who'll pay a few bucks for some shoulder pads...well it's not that large. Certainly not large enough to pay for the $50k fine.

First: $25k, not $50k. Second: the results from the recent Kickstarter campaign seem to suggest you are factually in error. Third: this is off-topic. Please don't derail the thread any further along this line of discussion.

xruslanx wrote:
Right but being guilty of *any* amount of crimes still makes you guilty. If Nick Vallacci didn't want to lose his business he shouldn't have started making money by illegally exploiting other company's IP. A lot of people seem to be assuming this will "damage" GW in some way but realistically, the number of people who have heard of this case, and the number of *them* who decide to check out CHS after reading about it, and the number of *them* who'll pay a few bucks for some shoulder pads...well it's not that large. Certainly not large enough to pay for the $25k fine.

Chapterhouse have not been found guilty of any crime. As was just pointed out to you, criminal procedings are not the same as a civil suit.

Fines are also not the same as damages, just FYI.

 agnosto wrote:
it cost GW, at best guess, several hundred thousand dollars (at least) to get that $25k.

I just want to emphasize that GW has spent in the millions of dollars. GW's legal team was bigger and more senior than CHS'... Given that, there is absolutely no way, as of the time the jury made its decision, GW spent anything less than $5 Million to pursue all of this. I know CHS' representation spent a similar amount and it was a smaller less senior team. We're looking at GW getting a half of a percent of what they spent.

For anyone who still has doubt about the victor. If CHS "lost," then CHS would have to lose 200 more times for GW to "win".

xruslanx wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

More like 10 and 3. And a civil case is not the same as a criminal case. Neither Chapterhouse Studios nor Games Workshop are criminals. This is a case about competitors in a market. There is no "victim," though one can make a fine case that if there were a victim, it would be Chapterhouse Studios and Nick Villacci as Games Workshop has stated multiple times that Games Workshop has not suffered harm to its business as a result of Chapterhouse Studios.

Right but being guilty of *any* amount of crimes still makes you guilty. If Nick Vallacci didn't want to lose his business he shouldn't have started making money by illegally exploiting other company's IP. A lot of people seem to be assuming this will "damage" GW in some way but realistically, the number of people who have heard of this case, and the number of *them* who decide to check out CHS after reading about it, and the number of *them* who'll pay a few bucks for some shoulder pads...well it's not that large. Certainly not large enough to pay for the $25k fine.

It isn't a crime.

A crime results in a criminal prosecution. This is a civil case.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

More like 10 and 3. And a civil case is not the same as a criminal case. Neither Chapterhouse Studios nor Games Workshop are criminals. This is a case about competitors in a market. There is no "victim," though one can make a fine case that if there were a victim, it would be Chapterhouse Studios and Nick Villacci as Games Workshop has stated multiple times that Games Workshop has not suffered harm to its business as a result of Chapterhouse Studios.

Right but being guilty of *any* amount of crimes still makes you guilty. If Nick Vallacci didn't want to lose his business he shouldn't have started making money by illegally exploiting other company's IP. A lot of people seem to be assuming this will "damage" GW in some way but realistically, the number of people who have heard of this case, and the number of *them* who decide to check out CHS after reading about it, and the number of *them* who'll pay a few bucks for some shoulder pads...well it's not that large. Certainly not large enough to pay for the $25k fine.

It isn't a crime.

A crime results in a criminal prosecution. This is a civil case.

Still, basing your business on something that is illegal makes it hard to have any sympathy for this guy.

How many times must things be explained to you in explicit detail before you start to realise that you're wrong?

You just really lack any sort of reading comprehension, don't you?

xruslanx wrote:

Still, basing your business on something that is illegal makes it hard to have any sympathy for this guy.

Basing your business on something illegal gets you arrested and charged with a crime.

No matter how many times you try to find another way to say the same thing, this will still have been a civil suit, not a criminal trial, and Chapterhouse will still not have been convicted of anything illegal.

xruslanx wrote:

Still, basing your business on something that is illegal makes it hard to have any sympathy for this guy.

Not to mention that illegal does not always mean immoral.

 Ketara wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

Still, basing your business on something that is illegal makes it hard to have any sympathy for this guy.

Not to mention that illegal does not always mean immoral.

Y'all have to forgive xruslanx. He's a Johnny-come-lately to this party. I'm fairly confident he hasn't bothered to read the 190 pages of this thread leading up to this point, so he really doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know about GW trying to claim ownership of generic terms like "plasma" and "space marine." He doesn't know about how they tried to claim ownership of Roman numerals and arrows. He doesn't know about how they tried to claim ownership of things they didn't even invent, like the eight pointed chaos star. He doesn't know how they tried to claim ownership of terms from history, like "chimaera" and "haemonculus." He doesn't know that about a third of the claims were tossed from the suit before the suit even went to trial. He doesn't know about how GW was scrambling, a year plus into the case, to obtain written assignments of ownership of certain items from artists who created them 25 years ago.

There's a lot about this case xruslanx doesn't know. I'd suggest that he read the thread in its entirety, as extensive as it might be. He'll discover that the same objections he's making now about "illegality" were made three years ago and debunked by people who have expertise in the law, as well as by the actual overall outcome of the case.

Edit:

@X: Here's the most recent kickstarter from CHS. They've pretty much already made what they need to pay off the judgment, or at least the majority of it, from this one release:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1877613212/28mm-wargaming-sci-fi-trenches-and-emplacements-te

Also : This lawsuit is not yet over, even when the jury has spoken.

Saldiven wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

Still, basing your business on something that is illegal makes it hard to have any sympathy for this guy.

Not to mention that illegal does not always mean immoral.

Y'all have to forgive xruslanx. He's a Johnny-come-lately to this party.

I'm fairly certain that xruslanx is anything but a newcomer here, though I am fairly certain that he does not understand what actually happened in this case, or what might yet actually happen as well.

Still, amazing to see the high powered law firms lining up to help out CHS, pro bono - this really must be a landmark IP case!

@Alph: I just meant that it doesn't appear that xruslanx has posted in this thread at any time prior to 10-1-2013, so it's unlikely that he's read the whole thing or been keeping up with it since the case began.

I agree that it's pretty interesting that a trio of such high-powered firms have all elected to represent CHS pro-bono. Even more interesting that such a big firm has chosen to step into the fray at this point in the process.

I'm really interested to see what kind of appeals are going to be made from both sides.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Presumably it reflects the confidence of the new law firms in their ability to win a lot of the appeals.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
Wow, is this the right firm?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_Cutler_Pickering_Hale_and_Dorr


If so, that corporate resume is....impressive to say the least. At this point, given the amount of money Games Workshop has already sank into this and given the amount of money they are going to spend on an appeal--do we foresee a settlement? Or would CH even consider that at this point (Or is that even permissible--a settlement on appeal)? As a side note, if I understand that firm to the one linked---Robert Duvall played one of their attorneys in the movie A Civil Action? Haha--wow.

weeble1000 wrote:
And this should therefore be taken not as Chapterhouse's confidence in the appeal process, but rather WilmerHale's confidence in the appellate issues. Firms like WilmerHale do not take a losing case pro-bono, and it goes without saying that in order to get approval through the firm's pro-bono committee, the merits of the case would have been evaluated.

Some nice quotes from the last page or so... man, that's a fantastic development in terms of drawing a line and saying GW cannot throw their legal weight beyond it. Because clearly, they're entering a whole new weight class now

It makes sense that these firms would have an interest in the case. It looks easy to get some big wins out of, and if it went the other way it would set a bad precedent for many other things. As it is, it might set an excellent precedent for what is and isn't allowable for 3rd party models / parts.

So yeah, an excellent development from my view!

So just so that I understand, the main IP lawyer of choice for Apple, a company that is plagued by 3rd party rip offs and accessories is defending the right of CHS to produce 3rd party parts.

If even he(they) can see that this is legal, what is preventing GW management from seeing it too?

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:
So just so that I understand, the main IP lawyer of choice for Apple, a company that is plagued by 3rd party rip offs and accessories is defending the right of CHS to produce 3rd party parts.

If even he(they) can see that this is legal, what is preventing GW management from seeing it too?

Cheers

Andrew

Yeah GW seem to be so stubborn on this issue that its almost impressive. I don't think many people have been rooting for them in this case, and the more it goes on the more I want them to be ground to dust beneath the iron shod boots of some pro bono lawyer.

 mattyrm wrote:

Yeah GW seem to be so stubborn on this issue that its almost impressive. I don't think many people have been rooting for them in this case, and the more it goes on the more I want them to be ground to dust beneath the iron shod boots of some pro bono lawyer.

As a past recipient of GW's overreaching 'screw the law, deploy lawyers!' approach to IP, I can say that I gleefully will embrace the idea of pro bono lawyers stomping on GW.

 AndrewC wrote:
So just so that I understand, the main IP lawyer of choice for Apple, a company that is plagued by 3rd party rip offs and accessories is defending the right of CHS to produce 3rd party parts.

If even he(they) can see that this is legal, what is preventing GW management from seeing it too?

Cheers

Andrew

Apple's lawyers are probably in the same position GWs are... The client says to do something and they have to try and do it, whether they agree with it or not.

 aka_mythos wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
So just so that I understand, the main IP lawyer of choice for Apple, a company that is plagued by 3rd party rip offs and accessories is defending the right of CHS to produce 3rd party parts.

If even he(they) can see that this is legal, what is preventing GW management from seeing it too?

Cheers

Andrew

Apple's lawyers are probably in the same position GWs are... The client says to do something and they have to try and do it, whether they agree with it or not.

I don't think Apple is plagued by 3rd party ripoffs and unwanted accessories. Apple embraces aftermarket accessories. Hell, that's pretty much all apps are, and Apple makes the tools to create apps freely available.

Apple has reacted strongly against direct competitors copying its core technology, which is a whole other ballpark.

Remember that Apple has always been a computer technology company. It is only relatively recently that Apple got into cell phones when those technologies merged, thanks in part to innovations on the part of Apple engineers. Samsung has fingers in a lot of pies, but Samsung was a (latter) member of the MENS club (Motorola, Ericon, Nokia, Samsung [Samsung replaced Siemens]) that established and sought to control cellular technology. In this respect, Samsung was, and still is, a giant in the cell phone industry. Apple is a relative newcomer, and had to break through extremely harsh conditions to get into that market. Don't forget that Apple has been involved in numerous FRAND (Fair, reasonable and not discriminatory) cases with the likes of Motorola, Nokia, and Ericsson owing to the large cross-licensed cell phone patent portfolios among the MENS club and extant industry standards to which one must adhere.

Apple broke into that market nonetheless and offered consumers a type of product that literally changed the way we approach personal computing technology today. Apple tore up market share in the cell phone industry with a 20 dollar hardware module thrown into a suped up iPod. Those companies were out for blood, and as market share began to dwindle they started to cannibalize one another with aggressive patent litigation. Samsung looked at the writing on the wall, took the fast track, and copied Apple's method of success, including copying patented technology and spamming the market Apple had been dominating with lower cost devices that undercut Apple's products. That is why Samsung is sitting on top of a pile of rotting cell-company corpses today.

Now, some may feel that this is good for consumers, and this is a fine opinion. Some may feel that Apple's patents covered too much. Some may feel that Samsung did not take anything of measurable value. But whatever camp you are in, what is described above is the basis for the blood feud between Apple and Samsung. It really does not compare to Games Workshop and Chapterhouse Studios in any way, shape, or form. It is two giant companies viciously competing in a critical market with a ton of justifiable baggage over their heads.

Alright lads, pull it back on-topic please.

czakk wrote:
I think they want to do an appeal, and I think they must be interested in the costs decision and shaping some of the briefs - afaik that's going to be an opportunity for 'new law'. Being able to get costs for a mixed decision like this would be a boon for anyone doing defence work and might discourage the kind of litigation strategy employed in this case (claim everything in the world, win on only a few).

Question I have, could we see WH get a major victory, get a large portion of their costs paid by GW, but still CHS get stuck with some of the associated costs of the pro-bono work (copies, filings, etc)? Essentially a pyrrhic victory for CHS?

 silent25 wrote:

czakk wrote:
I think they want to do an appeal, and I think they must be interested in the costs decision and shaping some of the briefs - afaik that's going to be an opportunity for 'new law'. Being able to get costs for a mixed decision like this would be a boon for anyone doing defence work and might discourage the kind of litigation strategy employed in this case (claim everything in the world, win on only a few).

Question I have, could we see WH get a major victory, get a large portion of their costs paid by GW, but still CHS get stuck with some of the associated costs of the pro-bono work (copies, filings, etc)? Essentially a pyrrhic victory for CHS?

Possible - but not likely.

Also possible is that CHS might be accountable for the costs of the counts that GW actually won, and GW responsible for CHS costs on the ones where GW lost.

More likely, null score - neither gets the other's costs.

The appeal... I very much doubt that much will be found in GW's favor.

In their shoes I would be backing away, slowly, not readying to charge my head into the wall, again.

The Auld Grump

Notice this name appear on the docket - http://winston.com/en/who-we-are/attorneys/johannes-tyler-g.html

Not sure if this has been commented on yet, in a bit of a rush, but he's part of the appellate practice group.