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30 Comments
- AmishRefugee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+61people slammed me here a few days ago for suggesting that it was probably the law firm acting autonomously and not by the direct wishes of Rein or Epic....
Thanks for being tool bags...
anyway, Rein is a good guy, as are all the other high-ups at Epic - Azimuth1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+44It was good of them to do this. My respect for Epic is restored.
- hansblix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19Yes, you were right. people dont understand that when a company has a trademark (multiple trademarks in Epic's case)
they have to hire a law firm specifically for the purpose of seeking out infringers. Just because a firm writes a letter to
someone on behalf of Epic, doesnt mean the letter is directly from Epic. - laserdisc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17It's like I said before dev companies don't pay much attention to what their lawyers are doing until it's too late and ending up fixing the lawyer's screw ups. Well they usually fix it. heh.
- Zuggy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15If they really wanted to apologize they would pay him a large sum of money and mass produce the toy, because it was awesome.
- TheMysteryCow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I sincerely doubt it. The lawyers were just doing what they were hired to do - protect the trademark. In this case, they just happened to take a misguided step down the wrong path. It's a gaffe, but I doubt anyone got sacked over it.
- Blandyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Edit: Deleted my whole comment (about 500 words) because I'm really high and don't know if it made sense.
I also don't want to leave it here and get bashed :-D - dobbinmon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13@ amorn
Sony... apologise? Hahahahahahahahahaha. - pronouncable, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I guess I shouldn't have to worry about my GoW themed chainsaw gift anymore.
- Bibimbap, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6They're serious about the "we have to protect our trademarks" thing.
The way trademark law works is if it can be proved that you didn't do everything reasonable to stop trademark infringement than you lose your trademark.
They legally can't pick and choose who to go after. They can "license" the trademark for no cost, (I guess that's what they mean by the permission letter). - zeptobyte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Dugg for an official use of the phrase "put the smack down".
- Fortyseven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Glad to see this type of situation end reasonably for once.
- healy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Wow, what are you, like 12 years old? The guy didn't shoot smack in front of the board of directors or something. He sent an overly aggressive letter after not researching the issue enough. It was a mistake, mistakes happen. Relax.
- dotorg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Moral of this story:
Do everything half-assed, then no one will mistake it for professional work! - eMximeR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4If you'd let one letter change your mind about buying a sequel to the best 360 game out now, you're crazy.
- xelloss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well I knew it was some lawyer that messed up. People are so judgmental when something bad happens to someone that clearly didn't do something wrong. Epic was fine from that start and just thats the way lawyers are.
- Jofaba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At this level it's absolutely ridiculous of course, at least by our standpoint as consumers. However it's the same reason that bar's cant hold "Superbowl" parties. If you were legally allowed to do that, then it's not like the only repercussion would be taking away the ridiculousness of joking about it every year and finally being able to say "Come see the Superbowl here! Free drinks for women!" etc. Instead, what you'd get is people renting out every high school football field and projecting the game on huge inflatable screens charging ten bucks a head, or renting out theaters, hiring catering companies with full liquor licenses and 15' subs...
*****, I started this post trying to point out how "out of control" things would get but as soon as the theater idea popped into my head I realized how cool that'd be, and I'm not even a sports fan.
Well that blows. But I do work for a company that pays royalties to every major copyright holder in MLB, NFL, NHL, Nascar etc, and in order to keep that money coming in they have to protect their copyrights and trademarks. All those annoying (R) and (C)'s all over the place equal billions of dollars a year to their owners.
I doubt it'll happen, but it'd be nice if the requirements of copyright/trademark vigilance by their owners was relaxed so that you could at least talk about the damn stuff without fearing of being sued. - Jofaba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1lol. Gotta give you credit for trying. Dude, no one clicks links that end in ?ref= unless they're looking for free porn. And most of the time they remove it because it's the first thing firefox changes when you do increase/decrease url changes. Not that... not that I know anything about... firefox porn surfing...
- MadMaxx426, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Don't peddle your ***** links here ya dumb *****.
- rheaume, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Im not going to create an account on those tard board to say what I want to say, which is they should have sent him something, you start sending legal letters without investigating 0.000000% of anything and you want to come off as the good guy? Send him a poster or something, thats a sad sack post in a fanboy forum filled with "its ok we still luv U" and "totally understand u attacking a kid for making his bro a Xmas gift". Brilliant.
- jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1well, good to see some common sense
ok....... - RedHerringHack, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Ok, So I guess it's safe to buy GoW2 now. ( when it comes out ).
- stgeorge, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0So he's saying it's basically ok to make millions of these "gifts" and give them away to "relatives" (if you go up the family tree far enough, we're all related). Of course, if the gift recipients choose to reciprocate with a gift of cash, it would be a completely different and independent transaction. The lawyer was right...
- fliptrick, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1i totally agree, things like that shouldn't go unpunished! I almost lost my respect for Epic for letting something like that slide.
Stupid lawyer should be fired - liquidcable, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1They should fire the mother fxxxxx laywer!!!!
- Ouze, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1I'm not sure why rockforever is getting dugg down, because he is completely correct - nothing special happened here, nothing magical or wonderful. This guy created this cool item, and when he published pics online, their lawyers sent a cease and desist. You would think under our trademark law it would be "fair use", but it ain't, and that's that. As was discussed in the previous thread, and as is now most probably common knowledge after the Cisco iphone fiasco, Epic has to do that, defend their mark. So far, much ado about nothing. Then comes this little... nothing from Epic. What, exactly, did they do?
They saw there was a backlash building, and blamed it on some anonymous lawyer. You know who the victim is in this? That same anonymous lawyer for doing his freaking job. Right now Epic is pointing a finger at him for doing what Epic pays him to do. In any event, this semi-apology changes nothing whatsoever - they are going to continue doing this, because they *must*, and the best offer they made was some vague fluff about a "permission letter", which won't happen, because it would be abused before the ink was dry and at best lead to unneeded litigation. People commenting that Epic has earned their respect - no. What would have earned my respect would have been Epic politely but firmly explaining that games are a business, and if you want GoW2, they have to defend their business. No apology warranted. - NeoOfTheSith, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2GG Mark. GG.
- 1911wolf, on 10/12/2007, -17/+2Oops? That's the best they could do? Did they fire the dick (nothing personal, all lawyers are all dicks in suits) in the suit?
- rockforever, on 10/12/2007, -24/+6This is more to me like "Aw *****, this is causing a backlash, lets blame the lawyers everyone loves to hate."
I'm prolly gonna get dugg down but if the company in question was Sony, it would be a different story. - Amorn, on 10/12/2007, -21/+1If it was Sony who did this, none of you will be so forgiving.
you all will be ''DAMN U SONY U #$@#$@''
