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Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
GW registered hundreds of copyrights more than a year into the lawsuit, and then tried to pretend that it could seek statutory damages because its copyrights were registered, and then "deliberately or at least recklessly" failed to provide its communications with the copyright office to the defense knowing it has received refusals to register some of its works, and then used Judge Kennelly's summary judgment opinion of copyrightability in an attempt to overcome that refusal, all after swearing to the Court that it had produced or was in the process of producing all responsive documents.

I think it is fair to say that GW was not "ready" to actually litigate the case. That Judge Kennelly let so much of this type of behavior slide so easily is...well, let's just say I think it will be interesting to see how the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reacts to the case if it goes to the appellate court.

Isn't that sort of behaviour illegal? If not, then it probably should be. It sounds like Contempt of Court, Perversion of the Course of Justic, that sort of thing.

Games Workshop's lead counsel was personally sanctioned for it. It is within the discretion of the Court to impose sanctions. Not everyone always agrees with the way a particular Judge decides to handle a particular incident. If you want to know more about Mr. Moskin's record of behavior, check out E&J Gallo Winery v Cantine Rallo out in California 'roundabouts 2006-2007. Mr. Moskin was at White and Case at the time and was representing the defendant in that case, Cantine Rallo, against allegations of trademark infringement. It is interesting to see how, regardless of what side of a case he is on and regardless of the relative size of his client with respect to the opposing party, his behavior is very similar.

Note that Mr. Moskin is no longer with White and Case, and left that firm about a year after the Gallo v Rallo case was over.

 Balance wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I can remember several GW staff happily admitting that Tau were an attempt to cash in on the popularity of anime and manga, at the time of their release. Not that any design elements were borrowed from other art, obviously.

Not that the average GW staff have any authority to speak for the company. I do not speak for the guys I do contract work for despite regularly talking to the owner of the company. A guy working retail for a much larger corporation is in much the same boat.

Yeah. At the time, though, I wasn't a GW customer, but I was working with a company that worked quite closely with them in terms of discussing IP (Hogshead Publishing). So I wasn't generally chatting to retail staff...

Tau were an attempt to attract the Asian market, specifically Japan.

Before their release they had invested time and money expanding into this territory and it was felt that a new range would help boost sales.

So yes they were cashing in on the anime style but in an attempt to attract Japanese customers.

 Ian Sturrock wrote:

 Balance wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I can remember several GW staff happily admitting that Tau were an attempt to cash in on the popularity of anime and manga, at the time of their release. Not that any design elements were borrowed from other art, obviously.

Not that the average GW staff have any authority to speak for the company. I do not speak for the guys I do contract work for despite regularly talking to the owner of the company. A guy working retail for a much larger corporation is in much the same boat.

Yeah. At the time, though, I wasn't a GW customer, but I was working with a company that worked quite closely with them in terms of discussing IP (Hogshead Publishing). So I wasn't generally chatting to retail staff...

Hogshead? Whatever happened with SLA Industries?

SLA Industries is still going -- ish -- reverted back to Nightfall.

http://nightfall.co/

Joint Status update Re: the Injunction, and some arguing.

The parties respectfully submit the following joint status report supplementing the prior July 12, 2013 and October 22, 2013 joint status reports in response to the Court’s request at the November 7, 2013 status conference that the parties clarify the language in the proposed injunction submitted on July 12 concerning development by Chapterhouse of derivative works. Attached as Exhibit A, the parties have added agreed language at the end of paragraph 1(b) that resolves the potential ambiguity raised by the Court.

Something tells me that if a bunch of schmucks off the street threw out the majority of GW's claims, a group of dedicated lawyers and judges are going to have a field day with what's left.

Oh, and the bickering that is going on in these joint status updates. Judges hate this.

czakk wrote:
Oh, and the bickering that is going on in these joint status updates. Judges hate this.

Yea, I don't really get it. Although I think, contrary to what GW says, there is ample reason to believe that GW will make any sort of claim at any point regardless of what it claimed previously. Merrett described his own claim as sounding crazy for God's sake. Clearly, GW is very willing to make claims even it feels are absurd and nonsensical. GW has filed multiple lawsuits against Chapterhouse Studios as well, and its counsel has engaged in sanctionable behavior. At the very least, I think it is fair to say that one cannot trust GW as far as one can throw it.

I mean, Moskin was sanctioned for failing to produce documents after Chapterhouse raised such significant concerns about document production that it asked for, and received, a court order to have lead counsel swear that document production was complete. And Chapterhouse even objected to the wording of Mr. Moskin's affidavit as being insufficient, and the Court agreed. Then it is later discovered that the documents Mr. Moskin failed to produce were in his hands the day before that affidavit was sworn.

I mean, come on! Really?

Just to pile on / concur.

Nor has it articulated any reason to believe that Games Workshop would in the future seek to hold Chapterhouse in contempt for copyright infringement simply for using random public domain materials such as an “X” on a flag, with nothing more.

Halberd. And the scores of claims withdrawn / dismissed with prejudice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
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Also just to pick some nits:

particularly as Chapterhouse has articulated no reason to fear that Games Workshop intends to seek rights in random such elements.

GW wrote:Nor has [chapterhouse] identified any grounds for its phantom fears of future frivolous claims by Games Workshop.

I had a good laugh at that.

Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Yes, there is, though I'm not sure if that's the term for it. The legal types would know.

My place of employment was the subject of such a piece of litigation a few years ago.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Normally taken care of by the inherent jurisdiction of the courts. Usually has a very high bar. Generally results in costs awards or curtaling the ability to bring lawsuits. I think California has a law though.

There are some common law torts, malicious prosecution and abuse of process. Again, very high bar.

Edit - Some coffee reading:

Here's a case brief: http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/266388/Patent/Litigation+Misconduct+And+A+Vexatious+Litigation+Strategy+Can+Justify+Awarding+Attorneys+Fees+For+An+Entire+Case+Without+Assertion+Of+Bad+Faith+Or+Objectively+Baseless+Claims

And two articles discussing the kind of conduct that will be considered vexatious: http://www.neildymott.com/new-weapon-has-emerged-defending-lawsuits-under-americans-disabilities-act

http://www.dailyjournal.com/cle.cfm?show=CLEDisplayArticle&qVersionID=290&eid=903322&evid=1 (scroll down to get to the federal courts)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Yea, but burden of proof is tough. I believe it is a state of mind issue. You have to prove that the plaintiff knew at the time that its claims had no reasonable basis. So it is pretty easy to circumvent. Hence you do not see them very often.

In this case GW (as a company) knew, and/or their lawyers knew, that they did not hold the copyright on a number of items they were claiming had been violated of copyright.

That looks a bit vexatious to me, though IANAL.

It would probably come to nothing, however the court may well end up spanking GW anyway. We shall see.

weeble1000 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Yea, but burden of proof is tough. I believe it is a state of mind issue. You have to prove that the plaintiff knew at the time that its claims had no reasonable basis. So it is pretty easy to circumvent. Hence you do not see them very often.

GW do have a convincing argument that they didn't know what they were doing...

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Yea, but burden of proof is tough. I believe it is a state of mind issue. You have to prove that the plaintiff knew at the time that its claims had no reasonable basis. So it is pretty easy to circumvent. Hence you do not see them very often.

GW do have a convincing argument that they didn't know what they were doing...

*Badum Tish*

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there a law on "vexatious litigation" in the USA?

Yea, but burden of proof is tough. I believe it is a state of mind issue. You have to prove that the plaintiff knew at the time that its claims had no reasonable basis. So it is pretty easy to circumvent. Hence you do not see them very often.

GW do have a convincing argument that they didn't know what they were doing...

And, looking at those latest posts... still don't.

The Auld Grump

It is not just a question of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
Apparently the right hand only has a pretty hazy notion itself.

Do we have an eta on the next update? This has been fascinating for me. I'm not a lawyer but this has been quite interesting, and I'm learning a bit about this stuff. Thanks for all the people who actually know what they're talking about who break it down for us non-lawyer types.

CoI wrote:
Do we have an eta on the next update? This has been fascinating for me. I'm not a lawyer but this has been quite interesting, and I'm learning a bit about this stuff. Thanks for all the people who actually know what they're talking about who break it down for us non-lawyer types.

We just have to wait on the Judge. All briefing has been submitted. There may be oral argument, but as far as I can tell from the docket that hasn't been scheduled. The court will eventually make rulings and the case will proceed from there.

So, I don't really want to scroll through pages and pages of comments.

Last I heard was CHS mostly won. Has there been any appeals and what came of hem?

 Wolfun wrote:
So, I don't really want to scroll through pages and pages of comments.

Last I heard was CHS mostly won. Has there been any appeals and what came of hem?

Just a friendly FYI, asking people to go to the time and trouble of summarising a very complicated situation on your behalf because you don't feel like reading what is already available, isn't likely to illicit the response you're hoping for.

EDIT
To try and be more helpful, find one of Weeble or Czaak's posts and click on filter thread, they're the two most legally minded people posting regularly posting in the thread, Czaak's posts probably have more links to the actual documents from the courtroom, some of which make entertaining reading. Should cut down in the reading needed to catch up.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Wolfun wrote:
So, I don't really want to scroll through pages and pages of comments.

Last I heard was CHS mostly won. Has there been any appeals and what came of hem?

Just a friendly FYI, asking people to go to the time and trouble of summarising a very complicated situation on your behalf because you don't feel like reading what is already available, isn't likely to illicit the response you're hoping for.

I don't really have the time to go through the 30 pages of discussion on it.
I'm pretty sure someone can just say "GW appealed, lost". For example.

They're not that far along, I'm not familiar enough with US law to really give a qualified run down, check my edit of my last post for an easy way to get up to speed.

Is it worth having a Chapterhouse Lawsuit summary topic, regularly updated by... someone... who is keen on the case and who reads this thread regularly? (No, I'm not volunteering.) I agree that this thread isn't really the place for a summary, but maybe a Lawsuit Lite thread is.

A summary thread would just be a pain for the mods IMO. People will pile in to praise/bash GW/Chapterhouse and it will be just as busy as this thread. I don't think we should expect mods to police a second Chapterhouse thread just because some people don't want to deal with a wall of text.

Good point... wonder if there's another way to do it. Article? Even a personal blog that could be linked to might be useful.

This one is a good enough place for all of it.

All it takes is a few minutes and a bit of effort and all the most up to date relevant information can be found.

As someone already noted, filtering the thread for weeble1000 or Czaak also works wonders.