GW accidentally forced NGNG to get a lawyer to prove GW doesn't own BattleTech

[Joe]

Probably worth noting that Chapter House rather stupidly tried to argue that Games Workshop had never sold any of their products in America, and that the lawyers representing said company were trying to come up with progressively more and more insane reasonings why Games Workshop should lose all of their trademarks, copyrights, etc. Not a particularly healthy response by any means.

 

Would really recommend reading through the court documents for that case at some stage. It's an eye opener into why GW acts the way it does.

[Marshal Rohr]

5 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Fixed that for you. Chapterhouse may have been foolish calling their products by GW names, but GW absolutely didn't need to go as nuclear as they did. An assertive but polite message saying "Hey, please rename your products not to use GW trademarked terminology, thanks" would have been enough.

 

Now I'll admit I'm biased- my opinion on current IP law is that it's a warped, perverse mess of a system and that people have a moral obligation to ignore and undermine it at every available opportunity, and also GW has burned so much of my good will that frankly I will laugh at every bit of misfortune that comes their way. But acting like GW is some innocent, blameless little victim and Chapterhouse was literally [insert dictator of choice here] and solely responsible for GW's ridiculous policy is absurd.

Except we know it was Chapterhouse fault. We know the people involved with chapterhouse were not blameless (one was banned from this board) and we know the Chapterhouse people enjoyed the drama right up until the consequences started. GWs over correction was corporate troglodytism but expecting the big business to not do the wrong thing is like expecting a super model to proposition you at a bar. It’s a non zero chance,  but it’s not much higher than zero. On the other hand, the Chapterhouse troglodytes failure was moral and social. They enjoyed being “famous” and they reveled in the negative attention. 

[Antarius]

I'm not keen to relitigate the whole Chapterhouse debacle, but I can't believe anyone still honestly thinks they weren't ripping off GW IP (apart from the names). I mean, I guess one can say that the only thing they did worse than a bunch of other people was to also use GW names, but that clearly wasn't the only thing they did. Despite what people may think of IP laws, you can't expect to get away with behaviour like that and that's not really GWs fault (although, like most corporations, I am certain they do many things that I, personally, find distasteful). In fact, it seemed like GW were pretty willing to let third party companies have their fun, until Chapterhouse insisted on bringing the hammer down on themselves (and everyone else).

Edited May 17 by Antarius

[TheVoidDragon]

23 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Fixed that for you. Chapterhouse may have been foolish calling their products by GW names, but GW absolutely didn't need to go as nuclear as they did. An assertive but polite message saying "Hey, please rename your products not to use GW trademarked terminology, thanks" would have been enough.

 

Now I'll admit I'm biased- my opinion on current IP law is that it's a warped, perverse mess of a system and that people have a moral obligation to ignore and undermine it at every available opportunity, and also GW has burned so much of my good will that frankly I will laugh at every bit of misfortune that comes their way. But acting like GW is some innocent, blameless little victim and Chapterhouse was literally [insert dictator of choice here] and solely responsible for GW's ridiculous policy is absurd.

 

It's been a while since I read about it but this sounds like a big oversimplification of the whole thing that comes across as going towards making out that Chapterhouse did nothing wrong or GW had no real grounds for it. From what I remember it wasn't just about trademarks/names, it was far more than that. There were several miniature designs or elements of them that GW felt were copyright infringment, and that's part of what the case was for so they could determine that. Several of those were ruled in GWs favour.

 

Edited May 17 by TheVoidDragon

[phandaal]

This has nothing to do with Chapterhouse. This is just GW doing something they are within their rights to do - taking down people actually using their trademarks - but doing it in a heavy handed, sloppy, and negligent way.

 

Even if GW hired someone else to go out and hit everyone who ever even thought about a warhammer, GW is still responsible for that. They should compensate anyone who had to rightfully defend themselves for just minding their own business.

[Joe]

2 minutes ago, phandaal said:

Even if GW hired someone else to go out and hit everyone who ever even thought about a warhammer, GW is still responsible for that. They should compensate anyone who had to rightfully defend themselves for just minding their own business.

 

Something not noted here, but on Rob Baer's dungpile, is they've set aside $10,000 per party to resolve any cases where this has happened. Which seems a bit low from my perspective, but I'm uncertain how legal fees tend to look in these cases (assuming people aren't getting fleeced).

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Joe said:

 

Something not noted here, but on Rob Baer's dungpile, is they've set aside $10,000 per party to resolve any cases where this has happened. Which seems a bit low from my perspective, but I'm uncertain how legal fees tend to look in these cases (assuming people aren't getting fleeced).

 

That is good. And yeah, it will depend on whatever firm people use to defend themselves.

 

There should be more onus placed on the adversarial party to be sure they are not wrongly upending people's businesses, in my opinion. This applies beyond just GW.

 

In the absence of that, having a way to provide recompense is definitely better than just firing and forgetting.

[HeadlessCross]

11 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

 

(personally, I love models, regardless of the maker, and I even have a few 3d prints, but I’m not going to say the people selling them have the right to do so)

GW doesn't own the concept of super soldiers in space. 

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

GW doesn't own the concept of super soldiers in space. 

But the actual design of space marines - they do. 40K marines have a pretty specific silhouette, even when they made primaris, they retain more or less the same one for that reason. 

 

They don’t own the concept, they don’t even own the name “space marine” (but do own the name adeptus astartes).

 

 

[sairence]

Hitting someone because they're selling something with the same name but from a completely different franchise is obviously silly. More due dilligence should happen there. I assume the judge didn't award any costs, which sucks for the seller. 

 

More broadly though...isn't there something in copyright law that its protections lapse to some degree if not defended? So if GW just sits back and does nothing against actual copies, they are failing in their duty, which then potentially would allow shareholders to go after their board.

[Matcap86]

17 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

GW doesn't own the concept of super soldiers in space. 

 

Neither does Disney own the concept of "Farmboy joins magic space wizard cult with laser melee weapon". But lets not pretend you won't get a grumpy Mouse letter when trying to make a business selling "Luke Skysaunter with his Laser Rapier".

 

The playing innocent while clearly copying key points of the original design, and the only reason there's money to be made is because you're piggybacking of the popularity of the original gets old fast.

 

Then getting into a semantics argument where the demarcation of "different enough" lies is why the whole copyright field of law is such a drawn out mess in the first place. 

[Brother Tyler]

On 5/16/2025 at 4:56 PM, twopounder said:

...

 

 

 

That's not a Warhammer.

 

This is a Warhammer...

 

 

No, that's not a picture of my copy. That wore out decades ago and I had to get the "Battletech" edition (which I also wore out).

 

And the Warhammer was a copy of a Macross/Robotech Tomahawk destroid...

 

 

...which is why the real Warhammer is now "unseen" and has been replaced by the version shown in the video image.

 

Getting back on topic, 

 

I think that we can all agree that No Guts No Glory should not have been included in the lawsuit. It is very unfortunate that GW's legal representatives were sloppy in this regard and NGNG deserves some sort of restitution for any losses incurred as a result of this sloppiness.

 

Beyond that, while the discussion about intellectual property can be stimulating, it doesn't support our mission statement; and the variance between members' understanding of and outlook on intellectual property laws (which vary from country to country, making the issue even more complicated) is creating unnecessary friction here. For those of you who are interested enough in helping NGNG to recover, I invite you to contact them directly to offer your recommendations or assistance; and for those of you who wish to pursue discussion of intellectual property laws even further, whether to increase your own understanding or the understanding of others or to influence some sort of change in those laws to more closely align with your outlook, I recommend that you find discussion forums or organizations dedicated to the issue and whatever legislative bodies there are in your country.