Reply To: GW Takes Ghamak To Court!

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People talking about legal Precedent have been watching way to many US legal shows. This is a statutory EU law which was then also passed in various coutries such as Italy. Statutory means it has been written and approved as a legal document by that countries government. There is no “Precedent” to set and frankly that is more of something we see in the US system than europen courts.

I believe GW are very likely to charge him under the law as you said under what is called passing off.

Misrepresenting one’s goods or services as being those of another business to take advantage of their reputation and goodwill.

To be honest this would be a slam dunk case for GW. You take a any line from Ghamak range and go down the list and compare it direct to the GW model. Each of those models you can pin point how much alike they are to the GW one. Even as far as using names. For example his lion model is named after a famous knight.

I dont know what defence you could put forward to suggest that you have not just copied an whole range of models in a effort to take advantage of reputation and demand of the GW models. If he was not so up front and frankly had some many models he could make some case but when it is this many and so close he does not have a hope in hell.

I want to make a point on Chapterhouse that people should go read the detail on that case. Everyone seems to think GW lost but it was not that simple. GW lost trying to trademark generic term for Space marine and generic rounded design for shoulder pads. They did loss a few which had been generic in case. For people that dont understand in any case you typically have claims and counter claims some you win some your lose.

It has always been this myth GW lost because they lost the Space Marine battle. GW actually won about half the design elements when compared to Chapterhouse. They managed to force chapterhouse to having to pull off sale most of the range this in effect put Chapterhouse out of business. The case was more 50-50 but the end result was the one GW wanted because Chapterhouse could not sell the models.

This has been true for Stars Wars IP, Comics, Marvel. This has been proven in cases before. Ghamak models are not just close to GW but he his in many cases straight out mirroring whole faction lines they make. I dont understand how anyone would think that would be legal for any business to do.