Did they actually use the word thief?
Yeah, or close enough to.
Creators of Popular “Star Control” Computer Games Fight Back Against Copyright Theft By Stardock Systems and CEO Brad Wardell
So in December Stardock declared that Ford and Reiche were liars and didn’t create Star Control, and then in February they turn around and call Brad a thief.
I must have missed that press release. Can you point me to where Stardock stated they were liars?
Or are you referring to a legal complaint that would have never seen the light of day like 99.9% of other legal complaints except that they went to the press for it.
Yes, the complaint says they were falsely advertising that they created Star Control. Not sure how you can interpret that as anything other than they were lying. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail eventually and you all will work things out.
I subscribed to this thread as soon as I could do so when we switched to Discourse because literally no other game project in that span excites me as much as this does but I’ve gotta admit that I’ve come to dread the updates to it :-(
Things should get back to talking about the game soon. Lawsuit stuff moves glacially and none of it effects the development of Star Control: Origins.
Perhaps a separate thread should be created. Put the legal junk in a Ghosts of the Precursor thread since Star Control: Origins isn’t even part of lawsuit.
Trial by popular opinion is what is trending nowadays.
It is my personal opinion that lawsuits need not be aired into the open like this. Fighting points of law (in this case, ownership of publication rights) should be done in private among the parties involved.
The media just heats things up and escalate emotions without any benefits at all.
Here’s some new screenshots to show you the status of things:
Starting point.
Traveling traveling in the solar system.
Towards Jupiter.
Oberon (one of the moons of Uranus)
On the surface picking up resources and looking for relics. That’s Uranus in the background.
Hope that makes this thread more worthwhile to subscribe. ;)
It does, and to be clear, I’m not upset at you or anyone for discussing a relevant, albeit depress, related topic here. I just really want a world where you guys and TfB are both enabled to create the best Star Control experiences possible. Even if I’m the only person on earth who knows that’s actually Star Control 3 ;-)
The Star Control that lets me conduct personal union with the hot Syreen comanderess after our national union was the last Star Control that mattered!
Her?
Her!
What?! No!!!
(I’m not a lawyer either, but I’m pretty confident this is in the ballpark)
Having a trademark gives you the rights to use the name and any visuals associated with the rendering of the name (font, color, logos). That’s it.
Copyright of the works previously marketed under the trademark are wholly different and need to be transfered explicitidlly. If not such copyright transfer exists, the trademark is basically the right to use a name and a logo. That would mean the mere adapting visuals or music from the originals (or using then as too obvious an inspiration) , for example, could indeed be a copyright breach.
There might be nuances, and I’m not a lawyer either, but this is the basis this industry is built upon, and the basics are not so complex. I consider basic copyright/trademark understanding (and how it differs between countries) basic for anybody working in the business on the creative side or working as a freelancer, not to speak of people at management positions in an studio.
I’m not implying any willful wrongdoing on either part, but if you wrote the above, it might be a good idea to get a refresher.
You should google trademark.
I’ve been in enough trademark lawsuits over the years to have a reasonable familiarity.
Trademarks exist to prevent consumer confusion. It isn’t about having a unique name.
You…initiated litigation that’s likely going to cost upwards of several hundred thousand dollars, and where the other party pretty clearly has escalation dominance, and you didn’t get an understandable summary from your council on a legal strategy that carried obvious PR blowback?
It’s not relevant to the trademark suit beyond the legal concept of product creation. People who don’t know legal meanings versus conversational meanings are always going to be offended if they read a filing against someone they like.
As someone who has actually designed, programmed and done the in-game art (badly) and paid 100% of the development cost for a game while working a job cleaning literal sewage off of excavation equipment to live on, I have a great deal of respect for the creation process and more importantly, a great deal of respect for intellectual property and copyright. Thus, you will forgive me if I don’t feel immense sympathy about the hurt ego of Paul Reiche III for being correctly described as the designer (which is literally what is on the box) while he is accusing me via his paid PR firm, of being a literal thief.
And there, the counterclaim disagrees with you. If Stardock is found to be engaging in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material of the previous Star Control games, and Origins likewise is found to include infringing material, that statement is probably not going to serve you well.
Having now read the actual assorted contracts, to be fair, Stardock kind of left itself wide open for that charge when it republished the original Star Control games. Now that there is legal war to the knife being waged, I suspect the legal review process for that decision will be seen as woefully deficient in hindsight. Serious own goal.
I like how Oberon the moon looks.
