This is probably the weirdest thing of all, and considering the history behind the IP, I’m not sure if Stardock would ever win this? I mean, IANAL, but there’s ample proof that P&F were behind Star Control and that all Stardock did was buy the trademark “Star Control”. Not sure what kind of legal advice they’re getting that says: “Go steal everything that once belonged to these guys and pretend its your own.”
It certainly looks bad for Stardock, if only from a PR point of view.
I’m not sure I see how when Stardock’s original stance was “we do not intend to use the classic aliens” how trademarking them was a defense of SC:O. They would have had nothing to do with SC:O. The CEO had literally said they have no rights to the lore, and if they somehow did they refute them. The only way trademarking the classic aliens could be a defense of SC:O was if they were lying all along and always planned to use them.
If you have seen evidence of any threat or action of P&F’s to completely stop development or release of SC:O I’d love to see it. Their settlement offer contained no such conditions. The only conditions were that they not use their lore.
I have seen posting where Brad talks about P&F not wanting Stardock to let people recreate the classic ships in the ship builder and then share through whatever sharing system Stardock officially sets up, which is extrapolated without much to support it into a huge threat to shut down everything. However that is not from any legal filing or anything of the kind, IIRC it was a request in an email.
The other demand I’ve seen mentioned was to not use the term “super melee”, which I think is a bit petty frankly but it falls under the unique terminology that the contract says they own.
We have clear evidence of the positions of the two camps from their settlement offers. And yes, while one tactic is often to shoot for the moon in a settlement offer, that doesn’t change the fact we can see both side’s starting position in black and white. P&F’s is “make your game, we make ours, you don’t use our stuff, we don’t use Star Control in the name”. Stardock’s is, hand over all your IP rights, pay us $225,000, don’t even think about making a space related game for five years, and issue a public statement that Stardock wrote for them. Paul and Fred could have attempted to demand a halt to SC:O, or royalties, or anything under the shoot for the moon tactic.
It seems to me like Stardock realized their game wouldn’t have much of a market without the original lore, especially with a rival game on the market. Brad said as much in those recent reddit posts. When they realized this, they first tried negotiating and now they’re trying litigation.
Maybe I missed this somewhere in the thread, but it seems recently that Star Control 1, 2 and 3 have disappeared again from the stores. The original games were still available for sale in May, as far as I know. I checked today and the only Star Control game available on either GOG or Steam is Origins.
So sometime between May and now the games were taken down again, no doubt at P&F’s behest (what with UQM being available for free and being superior to any of the original games). I remember that one of the storefronts first sided with Stardock on this, but that doesn’t seem to be case anymore? (Apologies if this was pointed out upstream and I somehow missed this.)
Not surprising. Stardock original lore frankly sucks in the games that they’ve developed in-house. ;-)
My thinking was that possibly (again, not a lawyer) that if Stardock claimed an unlimited license to use (without owning) the IP but they weren’t actually using it that it might potentially weaken that claim or alternatively strengthen P&F’s claim that said license was invalid.
The licensing agreement was not unrestricted. It had major restrictions. It had termination clauses (which have been hit like one about if they are not paid royalties for a certain amount of time). They made it non-transferable on bankruptcy.
Nothing about any of this would mean that we would not be getting SC:O. I think you are missing a little how things are separated. The trademark, literally the name “Star Control” as a mark for use in commerce in the area of video games, was owned completely by Accolade. That transferred to Atari in the buyout, and then Stardock by bankruptcy. That’s not in doubt (though there is an issue of if through disuse the trademark would have expired). P&F make no claim to the trademark. The do claim that them uttering the words “star control” as in “we are the creators of Star Control I and II” is normative use allowed under trademark law, but claim no kind of ownership over it at all. Stardock owns the name, they can make games under the name. There is no issue at all with SC:O being made. Even if the trademark is found to have expired, that doesn’t mean they can’t use the name, and they can just filed a new trademark now that it is in use again to regain exclusive use of the name.
If anyone thinks this whole thing is two sides trying to prevent the other from making their game, it’s not. Only one side is actively trying to prevent the other from doing their own thing.
Yes, possibly. However again the thing we are talking about them “defending” is the very they said they did not own and even if they did they refuted completely.
Are you certain of this? Even with respect to the termination clauses you mentioned? They only ever contested that the license to use the lore had expired?
I am pretty certain. As far as I have seen they have never said they owned the “Star Control” trademark. The most aggressive thing they have done is in their defense against the lawsuit they have tried to claim the trademark expired during the 2000s due to disuse. The only thing this would do if found to be correct is defang the trademark suit against them. SC:O can still call itself Star Control, and Stardock can then file a new registration for the name in order to have exclusive use.
I believe they have now filed for “The Ur-Quan Masters” as a trademark in response as well, since that’s the title of the open source project they donated the code for.
I should say for clarity, the licensing agreement is completely separate from the trademark. The termination of Accolade’s license to use the lore did not in any affect their ownership of the trademark. Even after termination Accolade themselves could have at any point made more games under the “Star Control” label, as long as they didn’t use any of the SCII lore.
It’s definitely defensive in a legal sense. Often the best way to protect trademark ownership is to enforce it in a very maximalist way in order to keep anyone from chipping away at the edges or looking like you’re not willing to defend your property. Stardock seems to be under the impression that filing for these new alien names will help them look like the owners of all trademarkable stuff from the original games. It seems like a stretch to me, but I don’t know what legal advice they’re getting. It’s definitely in contradiction to what they said they wanted early on, but when things escalate to a jury trial I think you can expect claims to grow on both sides.
Boy, the ship builder could be a real complicating factor in the whole dispute. There’s basically nothing Stardock can do to keep players from making their own versions of the SC2 ships. So if the legal battle settles out in P&F’s favor and that includes having to scrub every bit of classic IP out of the game, the ship builder could become a point of contention. I can imagine a reasonable outcome, but I’d be afraid the nuances of player-created content might be lost in the legalese.
Curious if @Rod_Humble has any thoughts on this based off his time at Linden Lab, where UGC and copyrights had to be a legal question they solved.
But right now, the ship builder feels like a landmine still waiting to go off.
I think the agreement was pretty clear and of a pretty standard type for the time in the industry. The differences between copyright and trademark and who owns what are laid out pretty clearly, and you can actually see in the documentation exactly how Accolade treated the licensing (they had to negotiate with P&F to make 3DO, SC3, and a hypothetical SC4). That shows what they intended.
They do seem to be saying this now, which is weird and, I think, just wrong. I think they’re on the path to making a great game in the spirit of SC2 with their own story. It seems like most folks are cool with that, and are hoping to get a great game.
So, actually, in their countersuit, P&F have claimed that when Accolade failed to pay them the licensing fees for SC2, they lost the rights to everything related to Star Control. That made later transfers of the SC trademark to Infogrames and Atari and Stardock fraudulent.
I don’t honestly know if this claim is substantiated or not. No doubt Stardock sees this claim as a major attack on their property. But it was made (formally, anyway, I don’t know if it came up informally) after Stardock had already sued Paul & Fred. It also doesn’t seem to me to be an existential threat to their game. It would just mean that even Stardock couldn’t use the Star Control name for Origins. You’d think they’d be able get recompensed for their expenditure of $300,000 for the trademark if it turned out to be fraudulently sold to them.
EDIT: Oops, @Thrag has it right, above. P&F claim that Accolade lost the trademark because they didn’t sell any SC products (using their lack of licensing payments as proof), and therefore Atari/Infogrames could never have sold them to Stardock.
Is there someone left to do that?
As for the ship builder, they can certainly prevent distribution of infringing fan-made materials via in-game interface, at the very least.
And if they thought Accolade had lost the right to the trademark, why wouldn’t they have filed for it themselves?
Yeah, I doubt it. Policing this kind of thing (if the game is popular enough, anyway) is a huge expense and probably still impossible.
I think this aspect of the rights came to light once they were digging into the contracts as the dispute with Stardock heated up. Both sides “discovered” some new rights as that process went on. Including Stardock supposedly owning everything trademarkable in the original games!
Unlikely. See section 4.05 of the APA.
We never really solved it tbh, we just threw bodies at the problem. You can throw as many legal terms at folks as you want but if you make a creativity tool then they are going to make things you dont want them to or they do not own the rights to.
So the old fashioned DMCA request and manual review followed by takedown was really the only solution that worked. It was the least bad of all the bad options.
Also the better your tools the worse it gets, so nobody really cares that much if you make say a starwars ship in Minecraft, but if you can make one that looks decent in a ship editor then yeah you may get a call from Disney.
How that relates to a game on say Steam or an IP with low customer awareness like StarControl I dont know.
I really appreciate the work you’ve put into this thread with your summaries and timelines.
Thanks! I do my best! I should say that I’m not a lawyer and I’m sure I’ve missed stuff and misinterpreted it, but I did my best to put my unseemly obsession with the case to good use!
And RPS:
This 100%. The fact that anybody is giving Stardock or Wardell any benefit of the doubt here is amazing to me.