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.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I mean GW will have to let the law get in the way because the company isn't run by people who are utterly brainless.
There isn't a shred of evidence to suggest GW will go after satirical pieces of media.

GW claimed to own, in a lawsuit which they took all the way to court, trademarks on halberds, broadswords, wolf fur, snakes and plasma (among many other ludicrous claims).

Got a link to this stuff specifically? I'm assuming it's part of the chapterhouse thing, but those examples are baffling because that's not what trademarks cover. Surely there must be more to it?

That you think asking that is a reasonable question is telling in and of itself. People aren't making this gak up, it just sounds like they're making this gak up.

Fill your boots, hundreds and hundreds of pages worth..

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/355433.page

 BaronIveagh wrote:
On Dark Reign our reviews of FFG's Role play material contained 'images of GW IP'. I'm fairly sure a copy of the GW C&D we received was shared here on Dakka, but as this thread goes on, it's increasingly obvious that most of the posters are newer players that don't remember this gak.

I'll acknowledge that C&Ds for stuff like that is really on the outskirts of the law, since as a review you would have a strong fair use argument.

So, here's where things get... tricky. There's a ton of grey area in all of this stuff. Basically, the law can sent some rough guidelines for what is and isn't fair use, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the court to make a call. GW either had terrible legal advice (doubtful) or sought lawyers that would perform hyper strict actions. Eventually a firm will take the money to issue the C&D, since there is at least a colorable claim.

Give that the management team of the time has been replaced, and GW has significantly shifted gears when it comes to previews and reviews, I think they realized that bullying small sites, forums, and individuals wasn't actually helping. It was also costing money, because lawyers bill by the hours.

The actions of the prior management aside, these current guidelines hew pretty closely to generally accepted definitions of fair use.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
The Chapterhouse was an example of GW's legal team being overzealous. Had they limited themselves to the actual violations of copyright Chapterhouse was guilty of, they would had gotten a legal victory.

The error wasn't in suing Chapterhouse, the error was trying to bite far more than what the law dictated they could chew.

they did achieve a legal victory, and Chapterhouse went out of business.

it was a pyrrhic victory, in that they spent a fortune and lost on the one thing everybody seemed to think they would (shoulderpad shapes), but they protected a lot more of their stuff than I would have guessed.

 Tyran wrote:
The Chapterhouse was an example of GW's legal team being overzealous. Had they limited themselves to the actual violations of copyright Chapterhouse was guilty of, they would had gotten a legal victory.

The error wasn't in suing Chapterhouse, the error was trying to bite far more than what the law dictated they could chew.

You take that back right now! GW invented Roman numerals in the 1980s!

Since someone asked about it, here's a link to the very old thread on the last time GW lost their minds and started sending C&D letters to fansites.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/264704.page


For those wishing to read a GW Cease and Desist. Took me a while to find it.

Give that the management team of the time has been replaced, and GW has significantly shifted gears when it comes to previews and reviews, I think they realized that bullying small sites, forums, and individuals wasn't actually helping. It was also costing money, because lawyers bill by the hours.

The actions of the prior management aside, these current guidelines hew pretty closely to generally accepted definitions of fair use.

A change in CEO is not a replacement of management. Rountree was CFO through all of this. Kirby may not be as directly involved anymore, but he isn't gone by any means. The current CFO was the Company Secretary back when CHS was current, and the current Company Secretary is a solicitor who joined in 2010.

I'll happily concede that's enough changes for different thinking to win out, but there's still a critical number of the same people with likely similar thinking by the same measure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Plus they have salaried legal people, they're spending the cash on salaries, not invoices.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I mean GW will have to let the law get in the way because the company isn't run by people who are utterly brainless.
There isn't a shred of evidence to suggest GW will go after satirical pieces of media.

GW claimed to own, in a lawsuit which they took all the way to court, trademarks on halberds, broadswords, wolf fur, snakes and plasma (among many other ludicrous claims).

Got a link to this stuff specifically? I'm assuming it's part of the chapterhouse thing, but those examples are baffling because that's not what trademarks cover. Surely there must be more to it?

That you think asking that is a reasonable question is telling in and of itself. People aren't making this gak up, it just sounds like they're making this gak up.

Fill your boots, hundreds and hundreds of pages worth..

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/355433.page

How is that not a reasonable question? Having only seem summaries of the whole thing I hadn't actually seen those examples said or quoted before. I didn't really follow the lawsuit at the time so have missed quite a lot of the specifics of it, it seems.

Reading one of the actual documents from the time, GW even seems to say they aren't outright claiming those things as their own thing, but rather they're elements associated with their work that help identify them. So it seems more a case of "Our miniatures heavily feature roman numerals and stylized wings as part of their identity, so you doing so is trying to evoke ours" sort of thing, which still seems quite absurd but I suppose it's slightly more understandable than "You created a miniature with roman numerals, we own roman numerals and no one can use them".

Its only appears to be a reasonable question if you aren't aware of the utterly flying rodent gak stuff that went on. If you were better informed, you wouldn't be asking.

Certain details may be filtered through years of internet hyperbole, but not as much nor as far as you'd think. Somewhere in that stack of documents is a list of terms they were asserting impinged, up to and including, IIRC, halberd.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Its only appears to be a reasonable question if you aren't aware of the utterly flying rodent gak stuff that went on. If you were better informed, you wouldn't be asking.

Certain details may be filtered through years of internet hyperbole, but not as much nor as far as you'd think. Somewhere in that stack of documents is a list of terms they were asserting impinged, up to and including, IIRC, halberd.

And also within those documents is them saying that they haven't tried to claim they own those terms outright and no one can use them, but rather in the context they're something associated with the look and identity of their products:

https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1200&context=historical

Second half of page 27 onwards.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1200&context=historical

Second half of page 27 onwards.

Yes, that is what I'm referring to. The section on the bottom half of page 28 states they haven't tried to claim they have those as unique trademarks they own outright in themselves but rather they have an association of them with their products, with the document saying that GW "has never argued (and cannot credibly do so) that any reference to wings, eagle wings, or even angel wings qualifies as protected under the Lanham Act." followed by a quote from GW saying they aren't claiming those, but rather the "unique association" of them.

Look, there's hundreds of documents, hours of testimony, pages and pages of discussion. I really wouldn't get hung up one thing that I'm not even confident is what you think it is.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:


Yes, that is what I'm referring to. The section on the bottom half of page 28 states they haven't tried to claim they have those as unique trademarks they own outright in themselves but rather they have an association of them with their products, with the document saying that GW "has never argued (and cannot credibly do so) that any reference to wings, eagle wings, or even angel wings qualifies as protected under the Lanham Act." followed by a quote from GW saying they aren't claiming those, but rather the "unique association" of them.

The 'Unique Association' in question being 28mm heroic scale, it turned out, when the judge wanted them to clarify. BTW: this went down in flames, IIRC.

 Polonius wrote:

they did achieve a legal victory, and Chapterhouse went out of business.

it was a pyrrhic victory, in that they spent a fortune and lost on the one thing everybody seemed to think they would (shoulderpad shapes), but they protected a lot more of their stuff than I would have guessed.

They both achieved phyrric victories, and Chapterhouse did won most of the lawsuit.

Warhammer+ is such an amazing deal, AMIRITE GAIZ?!

This is nothing more than a pre-emptive strike at any content creator that isn't directly involved in GWs Disney+ scheme.

They bullied mum and pop wargaming stores out of this world... and now they are going to be doing the same thing with individual fan content creators (who probably helped to grow GW to their current size, just like the small brick and mortar independant shops did)... This should be very transparent, but you will still find people meatshielding for the big corporation regardless.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
It's not about net loss or gain. It's about control. Fan made videos make GW money.
3d printed parts and 3rd party pieces make GW money.
TTS, Battlescribe, even ye ole fashioned internet piracy (even if it truely is a victimless crime) make GW money in the long run. But they have no control over it. Like I said. They don't WANT people to have space marine armies that they don't make themselves. They don't WANT the customer to buy a box of marines, then go to Etsy or someplace and buy a pack of custom shoulder plates with an insignia of a chapter they don't make.

GW has no issue with custom pauldrons.

Except they do. They take issue with that, alternate legs, heads, etc.

Tyran wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

GW has no issue with custom pauldrons.

GW cannot go after custom pauldrons, third party bits are not a violation of copyright (although things get murkier with full models).

Not legally but they can and do ban people from their stores for having them, and go after people that make custom parts. In the example, of the Charcharadons, if you show up with a space marine army with shark chapter pads, backpacks, other pieces, etc. that GW doesn't make, they will boot you from store or tournaments they run. So they only way to play your army would be at a non GW store and non-GW ran events.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Correct, parody/satire is protected under IP law, but let's not allow the facts to get in the way of a good anti-GW rant.

Much as GW don't let actual law get in the way of their threats of legal action?

Sure, and that's a major problem with the legal system that I've already mentioned way back at the start of this thread. Sadly, the way copyright law works massively favours the people with the deep pockets and lawyers on retainer versus the members of the general public who often don't even have a passing familiarity with copyright law.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

Okay, but what were the specifics? I can’t comment on a C&D I know nothing about.

On Dark Reign our reviews of FFG's Role play material contained 'images of GW IP'. I'm fairly sure a copy of the GW C&D we received was shared here on Dakka, but as this thread goes on, it's increasingly obvious that most of the posters are newer players that don't remember this gak.

This is a case in point. Theoretically a review is covered by fair use. However, there are limits on how much copyright material can be shown in a review before it strays over the line from fair use into infringement. IIRC (and I may not because it was a long time ago) this is what Beasts of War fell foul of and I can sort of understand that given their reviews tended to involve reading almost every Codex entry verbatim. You also have to prove the alleged infringing content is actually a review. The legal system is supposed to provide a mechanism for determining where the line between fair use and copyright infringement lies, because it's extremely difficult to write hard and fast rules for all eventualities. Unfortunately, access to the legal system is often predicated on financial resources and not whether a given party is in the right. That lack of equal access is the biggest problem with copyright law, not the existence of those laws in the first place. Chapterhouse is a good example here. A lot (though by no means all) of GW's case was demonstrably stupid but without pro bono representation Chapterhouse would likely never have even made it to court. The fact they did seems to have caused a change in how GW approaches the legal realm, possibly because by actually going to court it demonstrated to upper management that those expensive lawyers they were paying had no idea what they were doing. If going to court was more common I think we'd see fewer corporations trying to weaponise the IP laws.

As many people have pointed out, nothing in the guidelines GW has set out is different to what the vast majority of corporations do and I would argue adding in the various examples and extra detail beyond the basic bullet points is more helpful than GW need to be. Also, I've been playing GW games since Rogue Trader so I'm well aware of how GW has operated in the past. They have not exactly been a beacon of common sense and proportionate response in the past but their recent actions towards animators seems to be a change in direction. Old GW would have slapped down the C&D and gone straight to court whether they had a case or not.

 Ghaz wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

 Theophony wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

GW has no issue with custom pauldrons.

Well, aside from purporting to ban them at its own events (though reports are mixed on whether it actually does).

Once again that is probably due to whoever is running the event being worried that THEY will get into trouble and err on the side of stupid.

Link to GW's event pack. It does state "all miniatures in your collection must be Games Workshop or Forge World miniatures (excluding basing or scratchbuilt components)", but it's very much 'don't ask, don't tell'.

Note that events at Warhammer World states the following in regards to 3D printed parts:

Are 3D printed parts I’ve designed allowed?

Much like hand sculpted detail, if you’ve gone to the effort of designing and printing your own bespoke parts for your army, then these parts are indeed permitted at our events. Commercially available, third party 3D printed parts aren’t permitted though. Please bear in mind that if we do spot cast/printed parts on miniatures at our events, we will ask you to prove where they’re from, and may ask for them to be removed if there’s any doubt as to their origins.

Their basic rule for conversions is that "... conversions should be checked in advance with the events team, to ensure they are appropriate for organised play".

As someone who has played at WHW in events (and this was probably leading up to one of the gakkiest periods of GW legal artillery fire) I would say there were a lot more armies than not that had custom made or converted components. One guy had his awesome-looking army (which was probably about 25% maxmini or other bits) commented on by one of the staffers there and actually put on display in the cabinets for a while!

Of course they are going to write an 'official' rule banning those components as they don't want to encourage it and have to be seen to take that approach. But in practice the hobbyists that work for GW won't mind and most of them probably do it themselves. The only time I have ever heard of someone having to pack up models was when they made a massive show of the fact they were using non-GW stuff, mouthing off to everyone within 25 yards, and forced the staff there into a corner so that they had to take action.

Slipspace wrote:

As many people have pointed out, nothing in the guidelines GW has set out is different to what the vast majority of corporations do and I would argue adding in the various examples and extra detail beyond the basic bullet points is more helpful than GW need to be.

Most of the companies that had policies as draconian as this have since abandoned them as unworkable, however, or having generated too much fan backlash. Disney, you might recall, started backing off on this when they were pushing for an extension of the Copyright act to prevent Marvel and Disney characters from entering the public domain.

 Pacific wrote:
The only time I have ever heard of someone having to pack up models was when they made a massive show of the fact they were using non-GW stuff, mouthing off to everyone within 25 yards, and forced the staff there into a corner so that they had to take action.

A bit off topic, I had a GW judge 'remove' the offending bits from my minis, many years ago, at the last event I ever attended with my IG army. My response to his actions was not positive.

I also know GW requires 100% GW parts in an army if it is to be shown in any of their affiliated tournament streams and such.

There's a disconnect/flexibility between what GW policy requires (100% GW) and individual stores though, which are generally left to their own devices. As such most come to a reasonable understanding, I think 75% GW crops up a lot as a guideline which seems fair and accurate enough to me.

Many stores even treat Forgeworld as "non-GW" though, as it's not something they sell.

Some stores are more draconian though. My little brother went to a store that said if you're modelling in store it needs to be with 100% GW products, and when you're in store you can only discuss 100% GW products. He was asked to leave when he advised another player he used Revell plastic glue!

 Elmir wrote:
They bullied mum and pop wargaming stores out of this world...

Yeah, they don't sell half of what they produce to mum and pop wargaming stores at a huge discount, letting them massively undercut GW's own store-- Oh wait, they do, making them really gak at 'bullying'. How is weather on your planet because it surely isn't Earth?

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Except they do. They take issue with that, alternate legs, heads, etc.

They don't. They have issue with stolen 1:1 copy paste designs GW made. They never went after someone making pauldrons/heads/etc with their own design. Funnily enough most knockoff makers aren't interesting in making these and prefer to steal GW images. Gee, how dare GW take issue with that, eh?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Certain details may be filtered through years of internet hyperbole, but not as much nor as far as you'd think. Somewhere in that stack of documents is a list of terms they were asserting impinged, up to and including, IIRC, halberd.

More like all of it was filtered by hyperbole and basher screaming 50 times, to the point it bears no semblance to reality. See screeching about rOmAn NuMeRaLs, a consistent design language evoking 'gothic roman in space' is absolutely defensible and - spoiler alert - GW won. This should give you a clue how 'silly' the lawsuit was.

Also, let me give you two other examples from real world - Mercedes claims they InVeNtEd HeAdLiGhTs (to use juvenile language from this thread) - no, they invented their figure eight headlights, and, like GW with their gothic roman image, went to court defending them multiple times (because when you see them, you think Mercedes), which is why knockoff brands tried to imitate them, same as with GW minis.

Then there is Apple, who went to court over 'rounded corners square tablet' - aka shape invented in Mesopotamia 8000 years ago - and won. Granted, mostly due to idiot jury, and I have no idea why people insist on keeping this stupid stone age system, but the fact is, they pretty much built their image on rounded squares and if that is defensible, then whining about rOmAn NuMeRaLs just shows you have zero clue how law functions. And if there is a problem with law, it's a problem with the whole system, not GW, and in any case GW had much better claim to their design language than far more vague claims of the two companies above.

---

Also, I find it funny wearing knockoff chinese clothes imitating famous Western brands make you look lame (to not mention using an imitation car or laptop badly pretending to be Ferrari or Macbook, which is complete laughing stock fodder) but using knockoff minis using stolen designs produced by criminals from toxic resin seems to be somehow badge of pride of people stupid enough to not realize they pay vastly bigger profit margins to these thieves (who don't pay taxes, obey customer safety regulations, or employ any creative people) than they would pay to GW so all the utter nonsense about 'greedy GW' evaporates like smoke and ceases to be an excuse to bash them when you willingly feed vastly greedier parasite group without complains. Hypocrite much?

 Irbis wrote:
Yeah, they don't sell half of what they produce to mum and pop wargaming stores at a huge discount, letting them massively undercut GW's own store-- Oh wait, they do, making them really gak at 'bullying'. How is weather on your planet because it surely isn't Earth?

...They absolutely don't, what the hell are you even talking about?

GW, which is the producer, sells to those "mom and pop stores", at the retail standard of 30% off the retail price, as a general fact. That is not a huge discount, that is standard practices, and a price which allows GW to get a tidy net benefit from each sell. Also, It allows them to get that same benefit without extra costs like additional storefronts or, you know, employees.

That is standard retail economics, it's not something specific of GW.

Also, I would expect they sell more than half their production to other retailers, not just half. Even though they have their own store chain and webstore and everything, they're still mainly a producer.

 Elmir wrote:
Warhammer+ is such an amazing deal, AMIRITE GAIZ?!

This is nothing more than a pre-emptive strike at any content creator that isn't directly involved in GWs Disney+ scheme.

They bullied mum and pop wargaming stores out of this world... and now they are going to be doing the same thing with individual fan content creators (who probably helped to grow GW to their current size, just like the small brick and mortar independant shops did)... This should be very transparent, but you will still find people meatshielding for the big corporation regardless.

That's a legit criticism if they actually start doing it - and I'm sure if they do people will still defend them - but they haven't yet. Some people just don't want to trudge down the shed and get their pitchforks just because someone thought they saw something that might have been a werewolf.

 Elmir wrote:
Warhammer+ is such an amazing deal, AMIRITE GAIZ?!

This is nothing more than a pre-emptive strike at any content creator that isn't directly involved in GWs Disney+ scheme.

They bullied mum and pop wargaming stores out of this world... and now they are going to be doing the same thing with individual fan content creators (who probably helped to grow GW to their current size, just like the small brick and mortar independant shops did)... This should be very transparent, but you will still find people meatshielding for the big corporation regardless.

Bullied mom and pop stores...which are 60% of their business?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

Not legally but they can and do ban people from their stores for having them, and go after people that make custom parts. In the example, of the Charcharadons, if you show up with a space marine army with shark chapter pads, backpacks, other pieces, etc. that GW doesn't make, they will boot you from store or tournaments they run. So they only way to play your army would be at a non GW store and non-GW ran events.

In the US there's tons of ways to avoid GW. I have no idea what it is like in other places though.

The UK has loads of places that aren't GW games and I'd even say that in most of these places GW games aren't what's played the most, rather games like X-Wing or Flames of War are.
The shop I frequented to play Bolt Action with a friend had multiple X-Wing and FoW leagues as well as some others and the only GW influence was a cardboard Necromunda ganger and a small selection of boxes to buy. Indeed we got quite a cold reception when we did play 40k there one time and went back to the local GW for GW games after that, using the Indie store for Bolt Action only.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Bullied mom and pop stores...which are 60% of their business?

Indeed. There is something GW likes to do (or liked to do, at least) which is opening new GW stores where those "mom and pop" stores are getting very good numbers, with the consequent revenue splits.

As to playing in a GW store, last time I did that I was still working there, and it's been... about 15 years since then.

 Irbis wrote:

They don't. They have issue with stolen 1:1 copy paste designs GW made. They never went after someone making pauldrons/heads/etc with their own design. Funnily enough most knockoff makers aren't interesting in making these and prefer to steal GW images. Gee, how dare GW take issue with that, eh?

I underlined the incorrect part. They, in fact, have done exactly that on at least one occasion that I can think of. In fact, IIRC, it's one of the reasons they lost most of the Chapterhouse case, as many of the shoulder pads they claimed were copies, it turned out they weren't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Bullied mom and pop stores...which are 60% of their business?

My local FLGS got told that they had to hand back over the stock they already had or GW wouldn't cut them any further deals on future stock when they switched over from metal to plastic. I'd say that threatening their bottom line would qualify as 'bullying'.

Wasn’t the basic shape of the shoulder pad, even separate from what was on it, something they included in the Chapterhouse suit?

 AduroT wrote:
Wasn’t the basic shape of the shoulder pad, even separate from what was on it, something they included in the Chapterhouse suit?

It was in the first batch of claims, but it got removed pretty quickly after some passing law student told Games Workshop's legal team that geometric shapes weren't copyrightable (along with grenade launchers, halberds, and roman numerals).

Yeah, GW definitely tried to go after people for making custom shoulder pads, it was a significant part of the chapterhouse suit, and their record re: FLGS is very problematic too in terms of opening stores right nearby to try to cannibalize sales.

That doesn't mean one has to think they're the devil or that every claim about them is true, but it makes one look rather foolish to insist GW has "never done" things that they, well, actually did.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

They don't. They have issue with stolen 1:1 copy paste designs GW made. They never went after someone making pauldrons/heads/etc with their own design. Funnily enough most knockoff makers aren't interesting in making these and prefer to steal GW images. Gee, how dare GW take issue with that, eh?

I underlined the incorrect part. They, in fact, have done exactly that on at least one occasion that I can think of. In fact, IIRC, it's one of the reasons they lost most of the Chapterhouse case, as many of the shoulder pads they claimed were copies, it turned out they weren't.

Here's a thread from this very site of GW (by proxy) going after a 3d printer custom shoulder pad store.