Dragonsreach
Super Moderator
Damn its been a long time since I got experience points.
Hell Yes.
Worst part about it was that I had to record on VCR the last episode and the recording was so poor I only saw last 10 minutes without "Snow"
GW try to claim trademark over the words "Space Marine"
- Thread starter me_in_japan
- Start date
Worst part about it was that I had to record on VCR the last episode and the recording was so poor I only saw last 10 minutes without "Snow"
Beelzebrush
New member
The BBC have now picked up on this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21380003
GW are scumbags for trying to enforce IP rights on such a generic term... what invention or creativity was involved?
GW are scumbags for trying to enforce IP rights on such a generic term... what invention or creativity was involved?
This is definitely a case of people in glass houses throwing stones. There is not a speck of originality to be found anywhere in Warhammer or Warhammer 40K. Everything they have was itself swiped from Michael Moorcock, Frank Herbert, J.R.R. Tolkien et al.
GW has a lot of gall.
RuneBrush
New member
I still think it's a case of six to one, half dozen to the other. Author should have done research to see if it was likely to cause an issue and GW didn't go about it the right way. I completely agree that GW doesn't own the right to "Space Marine" as a disassociated entity - however type that phrase into Google and tell me how many non related links are in the first page.
Anybody who is intelligent enough to write a book, get it published in paper and digital format should have thought "maybe I'll speak to GW legal about the title of my book, just to make sure".
As Mike has pointed out though, GW have made themselves look awful (again) by not approaching the author in the first instant and speaking to them.
Anybody who is intelligent enough to write a book, get it published in paper and digital format should have thought "maybe I'll speak to GW legal about the title of my book, just to make sure".
As Mike has pointed out though, GW have made themselves look awful (again) by not approaching the author in the first instant and speaking to them.
TrystanGST
New member
Not arguing about the Space marine thing, but I don't agree that I think GW when someone mentions dark elves. I think Drizzt. Take that GW.
Byteknight
New member
This reminds me of TSR, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, trying to enforce intellectual ownership back in the mid-80s of the term "Nazi."
Thats an urban legend ;-)
As to the argument that the autor should have avoided the term in the first place:
The trope of space beeing like an ocean is older than spacetravel itself.
If you call spacegoing vessels spaceSHIPS, how would you name infantry stationed on and operationg from these ships?
How about "Space Marines"?
Well you can`t, because some english blokes who stole their whole universe from 2000 AD, Herbert and Heinlein have named their *always-looking-like-taking-a-shit*plastic soldiers that way.
How did they come up with that, you ask?
Well, they are kind of like marines... in space.. go figure.
Hey GW, quick, get a trademark for "greedy asshats who sell overpriced crap without QC and don`t give a *** about their customers" before someone else enters into that special area of expertise :-D
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RuneBrush
New member
That's not what I was meaning (being very presumptuous that it's my comments you are referring to : ). I'm not condoning what GW did but the author should have been aware that poking something in the title that is very clearly associated with an existing companies product range should have rung enough alarm bells for them to have gone "oh look, an e-mail address to GW legal - I'll just send them an e-mail to ensure there's no confusion when I release my book.". That's bearing in mind that the Space Marine concept extends to miniatures, books and computer games already.
I'm guessing you don't like GW then...
Dragonsreach
Super Moderator
I refer back to one of my posts.........You're assuming that the author has heard of GW.
You are forgetting that we (Painters and Gamers) are a very small niche in a rather large world, and GW in real terms is just a Minnow in the Ocean.
cannon_fodder
New member
I'm in good company then.
100% Agree.
cannon_fodder
New member
Also, final nail in the coffin (yes, it's wiki, but has good sources and photographic evidence). . .
...Has GW been around since 1932? NOPE. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine
...Has GW been around since 1932? NOPE. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine
@runebrush: Yes, I don`t like GW that much. They simply have a history of behaving like jerks. While it is somewhat understandable that they have to protect their IP, they do so in the most heavy handed and irksome manner possible. Look up the "Damnatus"-incident for example!
But that was not the point I was trying to make: The therm "Space Marine" is just so generic that there should not be any need for an autor to contact an obscure gaming company which happens to name their product like this in the first place.
Thats because "Space Marine" simply describes the thing at hand in the most straightforward and uncomplicated manner: They are Marines in Space.
But that was not the point I was trying to make: The therm "Space Marine" is just so generic that there should not be any need for an autor to contact an obscure gaming company which happens to name their product like this in the first place.
Thats because "Space Marine" simply describes the thing at hand in the most straightforward and uncomplicated manner: They are Marines in Space.
The chances are very good that the author had never heard of Games Workshop. However prominent GW may be in this little corner of fandom, it is nothing in pop culture. You could walk down the street in the US (where the author lives) and ask every person you meet what Games Workshop is and you are unlikely to get an answer even if you do it for weeks and weeks.
So why would the author think to vet generic terminology just in case a never-heard-of company in an obscure industry had already claimed "common law" trademark (whatever that means -- apparently it is laying a claim but not officially registering it) to it?
No, this is GW being an arse, and there is no way responsibility for this situation can be foisted off on the author they attacked.
Actually before GW the term was not generic as you may think it was. There are documented three authors that used the term "Space Marine" in a total of 6 published works. Even Heinlein's famous starship troopers does not refer to the infantry as space marines, but mobile infantry, though he did use "Space Marine" in two other books. Terms like "Galactic Marines" or "Federation Navy Marine Corps" or "Imperial Marines" or "United Nations Exploratory Force" are more common.
In fact after GW released their take on "Space Marines", the term exploded in popularity. So to say that it was such a ubiquitous term prior to GW, is well, in my opinion (3 authors, 6 books is not large to me), wrong (though it is certainly debatable).
... just some facts to mull over, before you trivialize the debate into one side being completely "wrong". IP and TM law is a very old quirky business, complicated by lots of different regulations across many countries.
In fact after GW released their take on "Space Marines", the term exploded in popularity. So to say that it was such a ubiquitous term prior to GW, is well, in my opinion (3 authors, 6 books is not large to me), wrong (though it is certainly debatable).
... just some facts to mull over, before you trivialize the debate into one side being completely "wrong". IP and TM law is a very old quirky business, complicated by lots of different regulations across many countries.
6 books is most of the Harry Potter franchise, I'm sure the owner(s) of said franchise would have something to say about GW trying to use the name after the 6th book.
One of the nicest "discussions" about IP is a YouTube video I saw a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
Sums it all up for me.
One of the nicest "discussions" about IP is a YouTube video I saw a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
Sums it all up for me.
Yes, but its not 6 books by the same author so comparing the two is not really applicable. More over, 4 of the 6 are not particularly well know (I've never heard of them before doing my small stint of research on the term), the other two are "well known" due to being published by heilein, but again they are not in any of his "best known" works (ive never read them as a random data point). Another data point, is before GW's use of the term, the term was last used 20+ years prior to GW. So there was a huge void with the term in published literature.
I dont know how prevalent it was in film or other media, but in literature its by no means "well established" or "common place" prior to GW. But I am no lawyer, but I do work with IP lawyers on a semi regular basis, and its their typical SOP to go after anything that might be a violation no matter how trivial to establish brand defense so that when a big fish goes after your IP you can show the courts the IP maters to you and you have defended it.
My only point is that the discussion is not as black and white as people tend to make it be on the internets
Tercha
New member
Its all over now:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/02/space-marine-copyright/
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/02/space-marine-copyright/
