Reply To: GW Takes Ghamak To Court!

[frankelee]

The standard for what constitutes IP theft or an attempt to violate trademark is much higher than the common person believes it is, at least here in the United States where I live. Saying a space marine looks like another space marine to your mom is not likely to be the criterion a court will use, or which would survive appeal, probably sub 1% chance of that happening.

On the contrary usually the similarities must be rather exacting and designed to cause confusion, or for IP theft, be nearly directly taking the thing and just reusing it with permission or rights payments. There has been a lot of movement on this issue in the last five decades though, at one time the Star Wars IP holder could threaten the Battlestar Galactica producer to not have laser rays come out of their guns and it was taken seriously and likely would have been backed up by a court. Now that threat would be laughed at, furthermore, courts have adopted tougher standards for what constitutes violating IP as the parties in question have gone from mega-corporations to private individuals.

If Ghamak were well funded and based in the United States, I can tell you looking at the first several pages of STLs he has for sale on his website that GW would have no case off of any of that. And in a related story, like Baron of Dice will likely prevail in their case should GW actually take them to court as that company is based in the United States. As for Italian law, I don’t know.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 4 weeks ago by frankelee.