it makes a lot of sense. We aren't talking personal opinion here. That would just ruin the judicial system. Warhammer is losing money by Alliance's using their name and logo without buying the rights. Also, the forums and information they are providing are illegal as well. It's not an open server, or at least shouldn't be. If you read the lawsuit you can see that they went around the system to legalize their work. It boils down to money. This isn't something that will ruin the game, maybe get some people annoyed, but loyal players will come back. It will give Warhammer more money. Something they need to get a few more creative thinkers on their staff.
Its very simple, and I don't blame Workshop one bit. Curse.com is making money off the Warhammer name, and not paying their dues to Workshop. Of course, its odd, because zam networks has been charging a sub fee for years. I don't know if they pay these MMOs or what. I am now curious about why zam and other websites can charge a sub fee, and not be sued.
Of course, how much money they could possibly be making from the Warhammer name has to be close to nothing, and I would imagine curse.com will settle this.
Brif why should anyone sob about Curse? 98% of the Keyloggers that are planted in in their mods are placed their by them, I have heard Blizzard devs say time and again that Curse is the main pipeline to hacked accounts. It is one of the reasons that they are implementing their own mod delivery system that checks for Trojans.
And yet not a single person, including yourself, has brought forth any proof of this and really need to stop spreading these rumors. I work as a moderator over on their site, as well as an addon author with projects hosted there. I have yet to see anything adding trojans to my files (or anyone else's for that matter). The most that is ever added to a mod is by the client for version checking to the .toc file. I've even decompiled the client itself and have found nothing that adds a trojan.
Your statement has no base, no reference and no proof. I'm also interesting in this blue post by Blizz backing up your claim that they've reported Curse as the primary trojan distribution center. Wait, there isn't one? That's what I thought. Research your facts before you post nonsense such as this.
NEWS FLASH! PAYING THE SUB IN F2P = NO DIFFERENCE THAN P2P GAMES!
Why is it that corporations have decided that no one but them should be allowed to have a domain name? A fan site is something a corporation should be happy to see.
Okay, so the big boys didn't care to create a fan site as good as someone else and that someone else has done well enough at it to even turn a buck... isn't that like saying that people can't collect and trade Barbie Dolls? Oh wait, no that would be more like the buying and trading of accounts... another retarded position of the gaming MMO industry. I guess it would be more like saying there could be no fan sites talking about Barbie Dolls or any other product on the market.
Honestly, what products other than MMO's have so many restrictions placed on the consumers? If I buy a car, I can upgrade it, use the hell out of it, sell it, trade it... ... and the same goes for guns, ammo, knives, and in some states women... but MMO companies have become so greedy and controlling that it has become pretty disgusting in my humble opinion.
They want you to grind your life away to play their pathetic games, then they release an expansion to make you grind more, and if that doesn't work they release another expansion and add twice the content to draw you back.... to grind more.
I found this article only because I was curious about Warhammer online after not playing it for over a year... I see i still don't care to play it.
"SWG was a world, now it's just a game" -adamrk-
"When the game was good, you didn't have to ask where the population was, because it was everywhere. When the game was good you didn't have to ask which server had population, because they all did. When the game was good you didn't have to beg friends to give it a try, because they were already playing. " - Salty Pete
I hate to flame, but next thing we know we will get sued for the used of putting warhammer in posts because they can't profit?!?
I believe that if someone buys a website and pays for it and it happens to contain a part of your company... sueing them (especially if its a fan site) is a silly and a harsh move as far as PR and debunking many people feelings towards them.
Most likely it will be thrown out... or at very most modified to the courts satisfaction (the website itself).
Seems like a money grubbing kind of tactics. Reviewing their pdf its seems to me this is more about wanting to take it down/take that web url address itself...
I hope this enrages as many warhammer fans such as myself.... to see a company that you enjoy their products going after content that is designed to promote their products...
good on GW... while i find them over priced, i do agree with protecting their property.
they got after miniwargaming.com for their use of GW pictures (mwg is now taking fan made pictures to replace the GW ones)
tho mwg is a online retailer for GW model figures soo it makes sense they would get after them.
lets not forget blizzard ripped off GW back in the 90s to make warcraft (it was a IP for warhammer fantasy) so im not suprised they are going after anyone using/selling GW related contect.
fansite or not, making any sort of money off GW products violates GW rights, EA would do it.. blizzard would too.. im sure any model company would as well.. its the reason they have copy right laws and CR their products.
Warhammer Alliance is still forums dedicated to a game called Warhammer Age of Reckoning. The use of the name is in that context is, although I;m not a lawyer and my opinion is not worth more than anyone elses here, that is IMO the very concept of fair use.
You do not need to be a non-profit company run by a nerd living in off cheetos in some damp basement to run a fan site. Curse revenue model does no involve the "use" of material pulled from the GW intellectual property.
Curse makes money off of a premium servive model of an addon management management software promoted on curse.com and banners on their warhammer alliance forums... a 3rd party forums site for the game warhammer age of reckoning. It has nothing to do with RPGs, Miniatures or anything competing with GW activities.
GW doesn't have a foot to stand on... they just wanna shut curse up and drag em in a lawsuit they probably cannot afford. As they say in poker, they are setting them all in, hoping that they fold.
They probably do not get the fact that the name of the forums does not matter... they can call it WAR-Forums.com or warforums.curse.com... or whatever... people are still gonna use it cause it's damn good and better than the official ones.
F**k Game Workshop! If they haven't been assholes since forever now there would be World of Warhammer instestead of world of Warcraft. I dont pitty them. I grew up on Games Workshops games, but they have always been assholes to their fans, especially outside of UK and US.
Would it be TOO much to ask that people understand the basics of Trademark and Copyright law before posting? (First, Trademark and Copyright aren't the same thing, and while they're both in the category of "Intellectual Property" law, and there's some overlap, there's a lot of differences.)
Warning: Gross oversimplification follows.
It is not illegal to "make money" using someone else's Trademark. I can start a company which competes with Games Workshop and I can use their trademarks in my advertising, to advertise either comparisons or compatailibility. That is, "These miniatures are 100% compatible with Warhammer 40K!" is legal to say. So it "This game is way better than Warhammer!" I *do* have to acknowledge that those are trademarks and they are used without permission, but GW cannot sue me for violating their trademark if I follow the rules. (I also cannot replicate their logo or "trade dress", as those images are COPYRIGHTED. You cannot copyright a word or phrase, but you can copyright a distinctive image, such as a logo.)
Trademark law was originally intended not to protect corporations, but to protect consumers -- to keep me from selling "Tilenol" or "Kentucki Fried Chicken", for example, using subpar ingredients and taking advantage of the trust consumers had in the brands I'm imitating. The benchmark there is "confusion", that a "reasonable" consumer might mistake the shoddy knockoff for the real thing. Obviously, this does benefit corporations, too, which is fine -- if you've spent years building a quality product under a brand name, you have a right to be upset when someone uses a nearly identical brand name to produce an inferior product and destroy your reputation. Trademarks are also limited to specific businesses -- "McDonalds" is a trademark for a restaraunt, but I could start "McDonalds Plumbing Supplies" and not be in violation.
Now, what complicates things are some annoying changes made a few years ago to the Lanham act, which allows for suits due to "trademark dilution" -- a corporation can claim that their trademark is "diluted" if it is used in a way which weakens the trademark, even if there's no chance of customer confusion. The language of the law is very vaguely worded and the court cases dealing with it are all over the map, so it has become the favorite cudgel for corporations looking to gain more control over their trademarks than the law actually allows.
IANAL, but I do not think GW has any real case here. There is no chance of a reasonable consumer "confusing" WarhammerAlliance.com for an "official" site. The "dilution" argument would be extremely weak. I think this is purely a case of corporate lawyers looking to justify their existence by finding something to do. However, it is also likely, given how poorly WAR is doing, that fighting in court to preserve the domain is not going to be worth it for the domain owners, and they will likely settle out of court.
I have noticed, BTW, that a large majority of the posters to this thread don't seem to perform any kind of legal analysis of the issue; instead, they take sides based on whether or not they like the Warhammer game, or WAR, or GW, or Mythic. There's a word for this kind of thinking: Stupid. Law is not about feelings or what you WANT or what you think someone "deserves". Law is about law, and if you're going to hold forth on whether or not a lawsuit is justified, why not study the laws involved and make a judgment based on THAT, instead of what you wish "should" happen? Is that just too much work?
The argument about the anonymous registration is kinda weak cause Curse will dodge it by saying that they actually registered to Goddady which in turn offered them "protection from spammers"... That's what "domains by proxy" claims to be.
On the next round GW will hit back with the absence of contact information on the website and Curse will dodge once again with what the original owner of WHA said just above, that not only they knew about WHA but had approved on a disclaimer... Then Curse will counterattack with the argument that GW doesn't even have a fansite on their own about the specific IP so how could it considered competition?
I don't know... i am all with GW on this but it looks a tough battle
gw doesnt need to prove anything or justify anything !they OWN the thing so they decide not anybody else if it was otherwise
ea would be the happiest company!there is a reason it works this way .true some closet company buy these ownership stuff
for the sole purpose of suing left and right but gw isnt like that their track record proves it.some just try shady ways to get by
and reep benefit without regard to the gw code of conduct!(yes there is one)or mythic would be happier to do like they like
already gw gave mythic lot more head room then gw usully give!
gw doesnt need to prove anything or justify anything !they OWN the thing so they decide not anybody else if it was otherwise
ea would be the happiest company
Hence my earlier point re:people not bothering to understand, know, or even care about the law before offering their opinions. Sorry, "dr". There are legal and illegal ways to use other people's trademarks, and determining if a given use falls into the former or latter category is precisely why we have courts, lawyers, judges, lawsuits, appeals, and all that other rigamarole. My not-a-lawyer opinion, based on some time spent actually studying the relevant law, is that GW doesn't have a case, but will probably win anyway because the expense of fighting them is more than the site is likely to be worth. Do you disagree? Then, please, tell me why, ideally with some citations of the relevant parts of trademark law or some precedent cases. Perhaps I'm extremely wrong, but simply insisting this is so without referencing any facts -- not just your idea of how trademark works, which is wrong in every way -- will not convince me.
Also, learn when to use the "shift" key, and some punctuation besides "!". Thank you.
I've always felt that Curse are a bunch of greedy crooks with shady business practices. I hold no sympathy for them if they're getting slapped around legally. I wouldn't shed a tear if their whole network went under.
Whether or not GW is being overzealous about their IP, I don't really have an opinion. Frankly, though, it's their right to control the use of their IP.
i agree about curse after they shafted mark from aion source, ive never used any of there sites since.
Playing: FFXIV Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Heh, youd think they would have learned a little from that. They missed out on a buttfkload of money.
Yeah, poor GW... They earn loads of cash anyways. The fact that they are very protective of their IP is actually good, only question is how Mythic got the right to it? Well, and how they could sell the rights to Warhammer fantasy RPG to Fantasy flight games that makes nice boardgames and bad RPGs.
Besides, Blizzard was not the company we know today at the time, they were most known for cheesy chess Amiga games before Warcraft, it Wasn't until Diablo that anyone noticed them.
I never thought I would see WAR stoop to the same level of idiotic drama as games like Darkfall.
Sigh, such potential squandered by stupidity.
"WAR"... be it Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Mythic... or EA... are NOT involved in this. Get your facts straight and dont use this as a lauching pad for your Darkfall rants.
Well GW does have rights to this IP title, TT WHFB has used this moniker for a long time. Although if GW really wanted it why not take action years ago when Curse.com started using it.
Really in the end it belongs to GW. This is all without regard to EA Mythic and WAR.
Although with regard to the game, well a website isn't going to revive the game, and I doubt it will put a steak through this blood suckers heart. It's gonna limp on as the undead of mmo's for a while longer till something else on the food chain manages to finally put it out of it's missery.
gw doesnt need to prove anything or justify anything !they OWN the thing so they decide not anybody else if it was otherwise
ea would be the happiest company
Hence my earlier point re:people not bothering to understand, know, or even care about the law before offering their opinions. Sorry, "dr". There are legal and illegal ways to use other people's trademarks, and determining if a given use falls into the former or latter category is precisely why we have courts, lawyers, judges, lawsuits, appeals, and all that other rigamarole. My not-a-lawyer opinion, based on some time spent actually studying the relevant law, is that GW doesn't have a case, but will probably win anyway because the expense of fighting them is more than the site is likely to be worth. Do you disagree? Then, please, tell me why, ideally with some citations of the relevant parts of trademark law or some precedent cases. Perhaps I'm extremely wrong, but simply insisting this is so without referencing any facts -- not just your idea of how trademark works, which is wrong in every way -- will not convince me.
Also, learn when to use the "shift" key, and some punctuation besides "!". Thank you.
mm!there arent many licency to gw, espacially not with a game like war .so those having licence are in no way related even remotely to curse ,so like i say gw can do what the hell they want with it .so yes they have a case because
obviously they want to sue curse.and if they sue you can be sure they have a strong case ,since they almost never sue!
the only time some kind of rule of conduct would apply is between gw and licence !no licence they got to pay plus the exemplary fine for falselly using name that they dont own ,rent or are even licenced to!
it like me using your name to make money!its not legal!i would go to jail so it the same thing here stealing is stealing
so curse .com should be sued fined and should go to jail!(thats my view of it!just because its online doesnt mean its not stealing!
as always well done Games Workshop, i see nothing wrong here for them to sue...
it'd be like microsoft using BBC iplayer while still charging players "gold membership" to view it. They are making money on the GW name... i'd be pissed too if another person was making money by using my identity for their own ends.
it's all about goodwill, and the common americ... i mean idiot, thinking that anything Warhammer and all IP related would therefore be authorised and thumbs up from the holding company, and any think or thereof would appy to have been given the green light. Welcome to the wonderful world of law, all GW is doing is holding their interests as a business and protection to themselves. I see no issue here, surprised they didn't do it sooner... meh.
just a shame no one read the article and just saw "GW sues Curse" and started monkey dancing here like a bunch of 12 year olds
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
I think the first amendent and the fair use law will pretty much quash this suit if they want to take it to court.
Pretty much tells me to never ever purchase anything that is related to Games Workshop.
According to the post above me there is no such thing as freedom of speech anymore, have to wonder about his knowledge of law. Fan sites have been sued before and unless they really have stepped over the line, there is nothing to the suite.
Would it be TOO much to ask that people understand the basics of Trademark and Copyright law before posting? (First, Trademark and Copyright aren't the same thing, and while they're both in the category of "Intellectual Property" law, and there's some overlap, there's a lot of differences.)
Warning: Gross oversimplification follows.
It is not illegal to "make money" using someone else's Trademark. I can start a company which competes with Games Workshop and I can use their trademarks in my advertising, to advertise either comparisons or compatailibility. That is, "These miniatures are 100% compatible with Warhammer 40K!" is legal to say. So it "This game is way better than Warhammer!" I *do* have to acknowledge that those are trademarks and they are used without permission, but GW cannot sue me for violating their trademark if I follow the rules. (I also cannot replicate their logo or "trade dress", as those images are COPYRIGHTED. You cannot copyright a word or phrase, but you can copyright a distinctive image, such as a logo.)
Trademark law was originally intended not to protect corporations, but to protect consumers -- to keep me from selling "Tilenol" or "Kentucki Fried Chicken", for example, using subpar ingredients and taking advantage of the trust consumers had in the brands I'm imitating. The benchmark there is "confusion", that a "reasonable" consumer might mistake the shoddy knockoff for the real thing. Obviously, this does benefit corporations, too, which is fine -- if you've spent years building a quality product under a brand name, you have a right to be upset when someone uses a nearly identical brand name to produce an inferior product and destroy your reputation. Trademarks are also limited to specific businesses -- "McDonalds" is a trademark for a restaraunt, but I could start "McDonalds Plumbing Supplies" and not be in violation.
Now, what complicates things are some annoying changes made a few years ago to the Lanham act, which allows for suits due to "trademark dilution" -- a corporation can claim that their trademark is "diluted" if it is used in a way which weakens the trademark, even if there's no chance of customer confusion. The language of the law is very vaguely worded and the court cases dealing with it are all over the map, so it has become the favorite cudgel for corporations looking to gain more control over their trademarks than the law actually allows.
IANAL, but I do not think GW has any real case here. There is no chance of a reasonable consumer "confusing" WarhammerAlliance.com for an "official" site. The "dilution" argument would be extremely weak. I think this is purely a case of corporate lawyers looking to justify their existence by finding something to do. However, it is also likely, given how poorly WAR is doing, that fighting in court to preserve the domain is not going to be worth it for the domain owners, and they will likely settle out of court.
I have noticed, BTW, that a large majority of the posters to this thread don't seem to perform any kind of legal analysis of the issue; instead, they take sides based on whether or not they like the Warhammer game, or WAR, or GW, or Mythic. There's a word for this kind of thinking: Stupid. Law is not about feelings or what you WANT or what you think someone "deserves". Law is about law, and if you're going to hold forth on whether or not a lawsuit is justified, why not study the laws involved and make a judgment based on THAT, instead of what you wish "should" happen? Is that just too much work?
COMPLAINT FOR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT; CYBERSQUATTING;
DILUTION; UNFAIR AND DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES;
AND UNFAIR COMPETITION
and these are the complaint fell free to research them all ,i did cybersquatting and it sounded frivoleous till i found the wiki and it sound very serious offence!
Would it be TOO much to ask that people understand the basics of Trademark and Copyright law before posting? (First, Trademark and Copyright aren't the same thing, and while they're both in the category of "Intellectual Property" law, and there's some overlap, there's a lot of differences.)
Warning: Gross oversimplification follows.
Thanks for the clarifications, however i would like to ask some questions as per below ( pls note i dont know anything about the law) :
It is not illegal to "make money" using someone else's Trademark. I can start a company which competes with Games Workshop and I can use their trademarks in my advertising, to advertise either comparisons or compatailibility. That is, "These miniatures are 100% compatible with Warhammer 40K!" is legal to say. So it "This game is way better than Warhammer!" I *do* have to acknowledge that those are trademarks and they are used without permission, but GW cannot sue me for violating their trademark if I follow the rules. (I also cannot replicate their logo or "trade dress", as those images are COPYRIGHTED. You cannot copyright a word or phrase, but you can copyright a distinctive image, such as a logo.)
"for cybersquatting under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d);" But WHA did being sold to curse, which they dont have the right, right? Anything by the name of "Warhammer" isn't it own by GW?
Trademark law was originally intended not to protect corporations, but to protect consumers -- to keep me from selling "Tilenol" or "Kentucki Fried Chicken", for example, using subpar ingredients and taking advantage of the trust consumers had in the brands I'm imitating. The benchmark there is "confusion", that a "reasonable" consumer might mistake the shoddy knockoff for the real thing. Obviously, this does benefit corporations, too, which is fine -- if you've spent years building a quality product under a brand name, you have a right to be upset when someone uses a nearly identical brand name to produce an inferior product and destroy your reputation. Trademarks are also limited to specific businesses -- "McDonalds" is a trademark for a restaraunt, but I could start "McDonalds Plumbing Supplies" and not be in violation.
Now, what complicates things are some annoying changes made a few years ago to the Lanham act, which allows for suits due to "trademark dilution" -- a corporation can claim that their trademark is "diluted" if it is used in a way which weakens the trademark, even if there's no chance of customer confusion. The language of the law is very vaguely worded and the court cases dealing with it are all over the map, so it has become the favorite cudgel for corporations looking to gain more control over their trademarks than the law actually allows.
What you mean is this? "The domain name warhammeralliance.com and the mark WARHAMMER
ALLIANCE itself literally states and implies that Defendants and their business are in an
“alliance” with Plaintiff and its products and services offered under the WARHAMMER Marks."
IANAL, but I do not think GW has any real case here. There is no chance of a reasonable consumer "confusing" WarhammerAlliance.com for an "official" site. The "dilution" argument would be extremely weak. I think this is purely a case of corporate lawyers looking to justify their existence by finding something to do. However, it is also likely, given how poorly WAR is doing, that fighting in court to preserve the domain is not going to be worth it for the domain owners, and they will likely settle out of court.
The thing is GW is suing much more, like the abuse of Warhammer website without proper procedure, etc...
I believe GW did do their homewrok before they come out with these.
Comments
it makes a lot of sense. We aren't talking personal opinion here. That would just ruin the judicial system. Warhammer is losing money by Alliance's using their name and logo without buying the rights. Also, the forums and information they are providing are illegal as well. It's not an open server, or at least shouldn't be. If you read the lawsuit you can see that they went around the system to legalize their work. It boils down to money. This isn't something that will ruin the game, maybe get some people annoyed, but loyal players will come back. It will give Warhammer more money. Something they need to get a few more creative thinkers on their staff.
Its very simple, and I don't blame Workshop one bit. Curse.com is making money off the Warhammer name, and not paying their dues to Workshop. Of course, its odd, because zam networks has been charging a sub fee for years. I don't know if they pay these MMOs or what. I am now curious about why zam and other websites can charge a sub fee, and not be sued.
Of course, how much money they could possibly be making from the Warhammer name has to be close to nothing, and I would imagine curse.com will settle this.
And yet not a single person, including yourself, has brought forth any proof of this and really need to stop spreading these rumors. I work as a moderator over on their site, as well as an addon author with projects hosted there. I have yet to see anything adding trojans to my files (or anyone else's for that matter). The most that is ever added to a mod is by the client for version checking to the .toc file. I've even decompiled the client itself and have found nothing that adds a trojan.
Your statement has no base, no reference and no proof. I'm also interesting in this blue post by Blizz backing up your claim that they've reported Curse as the primary trojan distribution center. Wait, there isn't one? That's what I thought. Research your facts before you post nonsense such as this.
NEWS FLASH! PAYING THE SUB IN F2P = NO DIFFERENCE THAN P2P GAMES!
Why the hell can't the whiners comprehend this?
Why is it that corporations have decided that no one but them should be allowed to have a domain name? A fan site is something a corporation should be happy to see.
Okay, so the big boys didn't care to create a fan site as good as someone else and that someone else has done well enough at it to even turn a buck... isn't that like saying that people can't collect and trade Barbie Dolls? Oh wait, no that would be more like the buying and trading of accounts... another retarded position of the gaming MMO industry. I guess it would be more like saying there could be no fan sites talking about Barbie Dolls or any other product on the market.
Honestly, what products other than MMO's have so many restrictions placed on the consumers? If I buy a car, I can upgrade it, use the hell out of it, sell it, trade it... ... and the same goes for guns, ammo, knives, and in some states women... but MMO companies have become so greedy and controlling that it has become pretty disgusting in my humble opinion.
They want you to grind your life away to play their pathetic games, then they release an expansion to make you grind more, and if that doesn't work they release another expansion and add twice the content to draw you back.... to grind more.
I found this article only because I was curious about Warhammer online after not playing it for over a year... I see i still don't care to play it.
"SWG was a world, now it's just a game" -adamrk-
"When the game was good, you didn't have to ask where the population was, because it was everywhere. When the game was good you didn't have to ask which server had population, because they all did. When the game was good you didn't have to beg friends to give it a try, because they were already playing. " - Salty Pete
I hate to flame, but next thing we know we will get sued for the used of putting warhammer in posts because they can't profit?!?
I believe that if someone buys a website and pays for it and it happens to contain a part of your company... sueing them (especially if its a fan site) is a silly and a harsh move as far as PR and debunking many people feelings towards them.
Most likely it will be thrown out... or at very most modified to the courts satisfaction (the website itself).
Seems like a money grubbing kind of tactics. Reviewing their pdf its seems to me this is more about wanting to take it down/take that web url address itself...
I hope this enrages as many warhammer fans such as myself.... to see a company that you enjoy their products going after content that is designed to promote their products...
unfair advantage lol.
killing their gamers trust and love...
good on GW... while i find them over priced, i do agree with protecting their property.
they got after miniwargaming.com for their use of GW pictures (mwg is now taking fan made pictures to replace the GW ones)
tho mwg is a online retailer for GW model figures soo it makes sense they would get after them.
lets not forget blizzard ripped off GW back in the 90s to make warcraft (it was a IP for warhammer fantasy) so im not suprised they are going after anyone using/selling GW related contect.
fansite or not, making any sort of money off GW products violates GW rights, EA would do it.. blizzard would too.. im sure any model company would as well.. its the reason they have copy right laws and CR their products.
Warhammer Alliance is still forums dedicated to a game called Warhammer Age of Reckoning. The use of the name is in that context is, although I;m not a lawyer and my opinion is not worth more than anyone elses here, that is IMO the very concept of fair use.
You do not need to be a non-profit company run by a nerd living in off cheetos in some damp basement to run a fan site. Curse revenue model does no involve the "use" of material pulled from the GW intellectual property.
Curse makes money off of a premium servive model of an addon management management software promoted on curse.com and banners on their warhammer alliance forums... a 3rd party forums site for the game warhammer age of reckoning. It has nothing to do with RPGs, Miniatures or anything competing with GW activities.
GW doesn't have a foot to stand on... they just wanna shut curse up and drag em in a lawsuit they probably cannot afford. As they say in poker, they are setting them all in, hoping that they fold.
They probably do not get the fact that the name of the forums does not matter... they can call it WAR-Forums.com or warforums.curse.com... or whatever... people are still gonna use it cause it's damn good and better than the official ones.
GW are fucked in the head.
Actually, you're mistaken:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15653
F**k Game Workshop! If they haven't been assholes since forever now there would be World of Warhammer instestead of world of Warcraft. I dont pitty them. I grew up on Games Workshops games, but they have always been assholes to their fans, especially outside of UK and US.
http://www.teraonline.info.pl Polski Poradnik Gry Tera Online
Would it be TOO much to ask that people understand the basics of Trademark and Copyright law before posting? (First, Trademark and Copyright aren't the same thing, and while they're both in the category of "Intellectual Property" law, and there's some overlap, there's a lot of differences.)
Warning: Gross oversimplification follows.
It is not illegal to "make money" using someone else's Trademark. I can start a company which competes with Games Workshop and I can use their trademarks in my advertising, to advertise either comparisons or compatailibility. That is, "These miniatures are 100% compatible with Warhammer 40K!" is legal to say. So it "This game is way better than Warhammer!" I *do* have to acknowledge that those are trademarks and they are used without permission, but GW cannot sue me for violating their trademark if I follow the rules. (I also cannot replicate their logo or "trade dress", as those images are COPYRIGHTED. You cannot copyright a word or phrase, but you can copyright a distinctive image, such as a logo.)
Trademark law was originally intended not to protect corporations, but to protect consumers -- to keep me from selling "Tilenol" or "Kentucki Fried Chicken", for example, using subpar ingredients and taking advantage of the trust consumers had in the brands I'm imitating. The benchmark there is "confusion", that a "reasonable" consumer might mistake the shoddy knockoff for the real thing. Obviously, this does benefit corporations, too, which is fine -- if you've spent years building a quality product under a brand name, you have a right to be upset when someone uses a nearly identical brand name to produce an inferior product and destroy your reputation. Trademarks are also limited to specific businesses -- "McDonalds" is a trademark for a restaraunt, but I could start "McDonalds Plumbing Supplies" and not be in violation.
Now, what complicates things are some annoying changes made a few years ago to the Lanham act, which allows for suits due to "trademark dilution" -- a corporation can claim that their trademark is "diluted" if it is used in a way which weakens the trademark, even if there's no chance of customer confusion. The language of the law is very vaguely worded and the court cases dealing with it are all over the map, so it has become the favorite cudgel for corporations looking to gain more control over their trademarks than the law actually allows.
IANAL, but I do not think GW has any real case here. There is no chance of a reasonable consumer "confusing" WarhammerAlliance.com for an "official" site. The "dilution" argument would be extremely weak. I think this is purely a case of corporate lawyers looking to justify their existence by finding something to do. However, it is also likely, given how poorly WAR is doing, that fighting in court to preserve the domain is not going to be worth it for the domain owners, and they will likely settle out of court.
I have noticed, BTW, that a large majority of the posters to this thread don't seem to perform any kind of legal analysis of the issue; instead, they take sides based on whether or not they like the Warhammer game, or WAR, or GW, or Mythic. There's a word for this kind of thinking: Stupid. Law is not about feelings or what you WANT or what you think someone "deserves". Law is about law, and if you're going to hold forth on whether or not a lawsuit is justified, why not study the laws involved and make a judgment based on THAT, instead of what you wish "should" happen? Is that just too much work?
gw doesnt need to prove anything or justify anything !they OWN the thing so they decide not anybody else if it was otherwise
ea would be the happiest company!there is a reason it works this way .true some closet company buy these ownership stuff
for the sole purpose of suing left and right but gw isnt like that their track record proves it.some just try shady ways to get by
and reep benefit without regard to the gw code of conduct!(yes there is one)or mythic would be happier to do like they like
already gw gave mythic lot more head room then gw usully give!
Hence my earlier point re:people not bothering to understand, know, or even care about the law before offering their opinions. Sorry, "dr". There are legal and illegal ways to use other people's trademarks, and determining if a given use falls into the former or latter category is precisely why we have courts, lawyers, judges, lawsuits, appeals, and all that other rigamarole. My not-a-lawyer opinion, based on some time spent actually studying the relevant law, is that GW doesn't have a case, but will probably win anyway because the expense of fighting them is more than the site is likely to be worth. Do you disagree? Then, please, tell me why, ideally with some citations of the relevant parts of trademark law or some precedent cases. Perhaps I'm extremely wrong, but simply insisting this is so without referencing any facts -- not just your idea of how trademark works, which is wrong in every way -- will not convince me.
Also, learn when to use the "shift" key, and some punctuation besides "!". Thank you.
i agree about curse after they shafted mark from aion source, ive never used any of there sites since.
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
I never thought I would see WAR stoop to the same level of idiotic drama as games like Darkfall.
Sigh, such potential squandered by stupidity.
Yeah, poor GW... They earn loads of cash anyways. The fact that they are very protective of their IP is actually good, only question is how Mythic got the right to it? Well, and how they could sell the rights to Warhammer fantasy RPG to Fantasy flight games that makes nice boardgames and bad RPGs.
Besides, Blizzard was not the company we know today at the time, they were most known for cheesy chess Amiga games before Warcraft, it Wasn't until Diablo that anyone noticed them.
But I don't feel sorry for Curse.
"WAR"... be it Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Mythic... or EA... are NOT involved in this. Get your facts straight and dont use this as a lauching pad for your Darkfall rants.
This is between Curse and Games Workshop.
This is completely Curse's fault.
They were idiots that used a IP, and from that make money from it. Sorry idiots but GW is just doing any other company would do.
It would be a different matter if they asked GW first, but they didn't. So they screwed themselves over.
Man the stupidity this is bringing out, just look at alienovrlord. Hey idiot, Mythic has NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.
Now go back to WoW.
Warhammer Alliance....
Well GW does have rights to this IP title, TT WHFB has used this moniker for a long time. Although if GW really wanted it why not take action years ago when Curse.com started using it.
Really in the end it belongs to GW. This is all without regard to EA Mythic and WAR.
Although with regard to the game, well a website isn't going to revive the game, and I doubt it will put a steak through this blood suckers heart. It's gonna limp on as the undead of mmo's for a while longer till something else on the food chain manages to finally put it out of it's missery.
Sic Luceat Lux
The owners of the website make cash of the trademarked Warhammer name.
I repeat, The owners of the website make cash of the trademarked Warhammer name.
THAT is illegal, NOT the fact of it being a fansite.
mm!there arent many licency to gw, espacially not with a game like war .so those having licence are in no way related even remotely to curse ,so like i say gw can do what the hell they want with it .so yes they have a case because
obviously they want to sue curse.and if they sue you can be sure they have a strong case ,since they almost never sue!
the only time some kind of rule of conduct would apply is between gw and licence !no licence they got to pay plus the exemplary fine for falselly using name that they dont own ,rent or are even licenced to!
it like me using your name to make money!its not legal!i would go to jail so it the same thing here stealing is stealing
so curse .com should be sued fined and should go to jail!(thats my view of it!just because its online doesnt mean its not stealing!
as always well done Games Workshop, i see nothing wrong here for them to sue...
it'd be like microsoft using BBC iplayer while still charging players "gold membership" to view it. They are making money on the GW name... i'd be pissed too if another person was making money by using my identity for their own ends.
it's all about goodwill, and the common americ... i mean idiot, thinking that anything Warhammer and all IP related would therefore be authorised and thumbs up from the holding company, and any think or thereof would appy to have been given the green light. Welcome to the wonderful world of law, all GW is doing is holding their interests as a business and protection to themselves. I see no issue here, surprised they didn't do it sooner... meh.
just a shame no one read the article and just saw "GW sues Curse" and started monkey dancing here like a bunch of 12 year olds
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
I think the first amendent and the fair use law will pretty much quash this suit if they want to take it to court.
Pretty much tells me to never ever purchase anything that is related to Games Workshop.
According to the post above me there is no such thing as freedom of speech anymore, have to wonder about his knowledge of law. Fan sites have been sued before and unless they really have stepped over the line, there is nothing to the suite.
Good Post.
I hope others take the time to read it.
since we dont know what the reason gw filed a lawsuit or will yet your and most of the arguement on this tread are irelevent
but im willing to bet that for gw to make a move ,they didnt do this on a whim!it must have been a very important reason!
i didnt google everything (would be too long but i did google one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act
dont know about you but just this alone make a strong case they have
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/legal/Complaint.pdf
this is the lawsuit!
COMPLAINT FOR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT; CYBERSQUATTING;
DILUTION; UNFAIR AND DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES;
AND UNFAIR COMPETITION
and these are the complaint fell free to research them all ,i did cybersquatting and it sounded frivoleous till i found the wiki and it sound very serious offence!
The thing is GW is suing much more, like the abuse of Warhammer website without proper procedure, etc...
I believe GW did do their homewrok before they come out with these.
RIP Orc Choppa