I don’t think so? My understanding could be totally wrong, but my understanding is that trademark exists to avoid confusion and to protect your brand, that sort of thing. So I don’t know what the point of it would be, if you could claim the name due to past work.
In the Indiana Jones situation, I would imagine you couldn’t use the “Indiana Jones and the ____” title, assuming you didn’t own the trademark. Wouldn’t this be similar to Richard Garriot being able to include Lord British but not calling Shroud of the Avatar the direct sequel to Ultima X?
No problem, I don’t imagine any ill intent to bad faith in your posts. If anything a little playing of the devil’s advocate which isn’t a bad thing.
The October 2017 timing was also when Stardock was taking aggressive action and making aggressive claims. Given that GotP wouldn’t even be coming out for years trying to latch on to SC:Os marketing seems a lot less of a likely motivation than their feeling they must act now to protect their rights.
Consider that SC:O has been advertised for a long time before the beta announcement. If they were trying to just latch on to SC:Os marketing what was so special about the beta announcement? Why not latch on the original announcement or any prior marketing efforts? The thing that changed in that timeframe was how Stardock when from “no, you’re cool, make your game, we don’t mind” to “we own everything”.
The issue of whether saying a sequel to SC2 is infringement or not is entirely separate from any alleged attempts to latch on to SC:O’s marketing. SC2 has been around for a long time obviously, they wouldn’t need to somehow time their announcement based on Stardock’s beta announcement in order to mention SC2.
Agreed. I’m kind of talking about two separate but related things, and probably doing a piss-poor job of delineating it in my posts!
Perhaps a better way of phrasing my opinion on the matter is that P&F announced their game when they did because of the battle going on with Stardock behind the scenes. I don’t think that they come back from Star Control hiatus after 25+ years without that, which is why they don’t have any elements of an actual game to show (unless something has changed!).
I also think that once they had decided to throw down that gauntlet, they then latched onto the marketing that Stardock had been doing and – to my eyes at least – ramping up into the final year of development. In doing so, they aggressively made violations on Stardock’s trademark. I don’t think it’s coincidence they flooded a bunch of retweets calling their game that, despite the fact that they can’t say so themselves. That’s a real weasel-shit way of trying to get around a trademark, IMO.
Now… if you have a bully trying to weasel-shit his way to taking your IP? I think the response is understandable. Maybe not wise (would need a looking glass into the future for that one!), but I can certainly understand it.
I think Stardock could have released an alternate-universe Star Control game with all those same themes and been a great game. I think P&F could have made a “spiritual successor” to Star Control 2 and had a great game. I think both parties could stand to make a bunch of money, assuming they executed well. Instead, both parties look like total assholes to me and who knows? Maybe we don’t get any game out of this, in the near future at least.
For the record, I know I’m usually going after P&F here, but Stardock’s landgrab really rubs me the wrong way and strikes me as… unethical. I get the motivations to protect your project, but they have really taken this to 11 when I feel like a 5-6 would have been plenty.
Such a damn shame. Sorry, I’m just getting maudlin now. ;)
There is the concept of normative fair use which allows others to reference a trademark.
Whether that applies to calling something a sequel is what the court will have to decide.
That article does mention a ruling about an individual sued for calling herself the trademarked term “Playmate of the Year” since he had one. The court decided in her favor saying “individuals are not compelled by trademark law to use absurd turns of phrase simply to avoid trademark liability”. While hardly identical to the “creators of SC2” statement since “Playmate of the Year” was a title bestowed on her by the mark holder, it is somewhat similar. While not in any sort of semi-official capacity like how Playboy gives the playmate of the year title, Stardock has referred to P&F as the creators of SC1&2.
I believe that P&F did totally screw up with their initial blog post since it didn’t properly cite the trademark. But that was corrected as soon as it was brought to light. Stardock does have a totally valid claim in that regard. However the notion that that announcement cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars is to me a bit ridiculous. IMHO this is something that deserves a “I find for the plantiff and award damages of one dollar” judgement, or even a heavy slap like a fine of a several thousand.
You have this bit mistaken. There’s no weaseling. They aren’t retweeting to avoid saying it themselves. They do say it themselves. It’s right at the top of their blog. P&F assert they totally can call themselves creators of SC1/2 as they are and it falls under fair use.
Notice that a lot of Stardock’s strategy is to somehow disprove they are the creators in order to, among other things, strip them of the fair use defense.
Oh! Sorry, I was referring to calling their game “the direct sequel to Star Control 2”, not calling themselves the creator of Star Control 2. I’m certain they have every right to call themselves that!
I wanted to take a second say thanks for the discussion and sharing your insights, by the way. It’s really nice to be able to talk about different viewpoints without a bunch of personal attacks and angst!
There still was no weaseling around anything with those retweets. All those retweets are from the time of the original announcement. Shortly after that when Stardock complained about that language and the lack of trademark attribution P&F changed it according to their wishes. Obviously they couldn’t go back and change other people’s tweets.
On request they changed their blog to say “we are now working on a direct sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, called Ghosts of the Precursors™”. But that apparently wasn’t enough since Stardock now demands not only they not use “Star Control” but that they can’t use “Ur-Quan Masters” or even “Ghosts of the Precursors” (or Orz, or Frungy, etc.)
You can voice whatever you want. People can respond in kind. If you employ reasoning that has gone off the beaten path - “I was in a Trademark dispute once, and obviously P&F should have trademarked this shit years ago” is off the beaten path - , people probably will respond to that. If you say things that are straight up incorrect - and you have said a number of things that are factually incorrect, like continuing to insist that P&F were somehow the aggressors - you can expect people to point this out. Possibly repeatedly. As has already happened, in fact.
The issue here is not that someone failed to memorize the timeline. And anyway, nobody expects everyone to memorize the timeline.
What is it that you imagine they would gain from Stardock’s marketing ramp-up?
They do not have a game. They do not have a crowdfunding campaign. They do not have positions listed to work on any sort of product. If any of these things appeared, that would be one thing. But they did not.
Is the argument or hope or whatever here that every time someone talks about SCO, they _might _ also talk about the future P&F game? That might work for a little while, but to what end? In 6 months, when there is no crowdfunding campaign or game or even much in the way of a staff to even be in pre-production, nobody is going to care about the future P&F game anymore. If something eventually manifests down the road - surely years down the road - is anyone going to care about the announcement now? Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a legal argument here. But from where we are sitting, there doesn’t appear to be much of an argument to hang one’s hat on in terms of charging P&F with any sort of bad or threatening behavior.
Ironically, the lawsuit means that it’s far more likely that we’ll see P&F’s name in the context of Origins, possibly FOREVER. A corollary to the Streisand Effect, perhaps.
Ok, let’s discuss this one. What do you mean by “aggressors”? Do you mean “sued someone” or “used the term Star Control in marketing efforts”. Because my understanding of the timeline (correct me if I’m wrong) is that the first lawsuit was filed after that latter event.
Before that it seemed like a more or less amicable relationship between the two parties.
I would imagine he means the lawsuit, since trying to equate mentioning their prior game in their announcement to filing a lawsuit in the realm of aggressive acts is plainly ridiculous.
Is this the latest theory, that Paul and Fred’s sour grapes and total lack of intent to ever create a new game led them to aggressively reference SC2 in their blog which forced Stardock to sue in response? Thus making P&F the aggressors?
I believe this is one of the issues that has caused a great deal of reaction about this lawsuit from gamers. The Stardock/CEO had made several statements regarding the pending cooperation of PF, well before the legal business began… Looking over the timeline based on information PF provided when they started blogging was that they never agreed or really even entertained working with Stardock or licensing the IP for Star Control (copyrights, not trademarks) that P&F assert they own. This has led to various accusations of falsehoods coming from Brad W within the community…as many were under the same impression.
According to the timeline there were all kinds of legal action (lots of cease and desist orders) around the publishing of the old games. There is also a lot of history of infighting between these two parties.
Lawsuits usually happen when two parties can’t settle their disagreements. Things come to a head and parties go to court.
The Sour Grapes argument is that Reiche doesn’t like that Stardock is making the next Star Control and he’s not so their announcement was meant to sabotage Stardock’s announcement by effectively saying “We’re making the REAL StarControl™ over here, see?”
they provided contractual representations and warranties relating to the assets (which they didn’t, in this case); AND
those representations and warranties were inaccurate in a material way (not possible in this case); AND
those misrepresentations/breaches of warranties caused damages, and those damages were in excess of any basket liability clause in the contract; AND
those representations/warranties haven’t expired (in a standard purchase between 2 commercial parties, normal reps would only last for 1 year, although any representations to title to assets would likely be extended); AND
the sale wasn’t in the context of a bankruptcy/receivership, as a sale in those circumstances exempts the trustee from liability as long as the bankruptcy/receivership proceedings are followed in accordance with the applicable statute (and this was such a situation). In these sorts of sales, you get zero representations and warranties and have only your own due diligence to determine what you’re buying.
But that’s not the situation here - they actually own the copyright to “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” here, so they could write a sequel, they just could use the “Indiana Jones” title if that title was trademarked by the prior studio.
In the same way that if Disney had just bought the name Star Wars, but George Lucas owned the content of the movies, he could make a movie that continued the storyline of the prior movies as long as he didn’t call it Star Wars 7 or some other derivative of the Star Wars name.
No, because unlike here, EA actually owns all the copyright to the Ultima games AND the trademark of the name, but they don’t own the rights to the “Lord British” trademark as it was expressly retained by him in the sale of Origin to EA.
The whole reason Stardock changed its position on ownership of the copyright to the original games (suggesting that P&F don’t own them, or don’t own them exclusively) is because of that problem.