Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 1
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Ok, so i've been using army builder (tm) for as long as i've know about it. Despite some people saying the product is un-necessary i find it very useful in wfb and 40k.
I generally keep my license up to date, and despite all the issues with the cease and desists letters etc i'll probably still renew it next time i need an update. But i do have a few questions. Firstly i understand why you feel the need to protect your trademark, although i've got no idea how something as generic as "army builder" was able to be trademarked, i guess at the time gaming was in its infancy i doubt a company would be able to trademark that today, but then i know very little about this stuff. Anyway on with the questions 1. Why only give the site running a hordes/wm army builder only 72 hrs to comply ? If you really just enforcing the trademark surely giving them 10-14 days to carry out something that might well require re-coding a website would have been fairer, especially since its been allowed to carry out for so long, this to me just seems harsh. 2. I notice in your own forums there are sections for warhammer, and a number of other trademarked games, but cant see any disclaimer respecting those trademarks on either the forum page or the overall page ? Surely if your going to ask others to respect your trademarks, dont you have to respect theres ? I'm assuming some sort of agreement may exist between gw and yourselves, afterall you are hosting or providing access to their copyrighted material and despite them going after fan sites, they always seem to have left army builder alone. 3. If the game companies did demand you remove any reference to their material, wouldnt you just been left with a generic army builder, that didnt have any armies to build, and thus the whole product would cease to serve any use ? |
#1 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 278
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IANAL, but I do have a partial answer to 2:
As I understand it, the takedown request was made to protect the term "Army Builder" from becoming generic - do you see any way that the use of the term "Warhammer" on these boards indicates a generic form? As in, is "Warhammer" or "Warmachine" or "Starship Troopers" or any other trademark being used to refer to miniature wargaming in principle, rather than specific miniature wargames? It is entirely within the function of Trademarks to refer to products; that is, after all, the reason they exist in the first place. As for 1 and 3: 1. Standard practice as I recall; the idea is not that the take down be completed within 72 hours, but that the receiving company acknowledge the request and either state that they intend to comply, or state that they do not and give their reasoning, within the 72 hour notice period. 3. They already did and do, yet it apparently sells quite well. Army Builder is already a generic tool, and Lone Wolf Development goes out of its way to ensure that it remains so. What other people do with that tool is up to them. |
#2 |
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
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In contrast, on the Privateer site, the name Army Builder was being used for other competing tools. This was occurring within the names of tools, such as "XYZ Army Builder", as well as in a general manner referring to the category of tools, such as "I'm looking for an army builder for Warmachine". Both of these uses were problems. The former group were an infringement on the trademark and what we wanted corrected on the site. The latter group was something for which a prominent reminder post would have sufficed. Quote:
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-AB lowers the barrier to entry for new players, which means more new customers (and sales). -AB simplifies preparation so gamers can spend more time actually painting and players, which means higher sales and more deeply involved players. -AB encourages players to experiment with new army ideas, which further immerses them into the hobby. -AB facilitates tournaments and leagues, which further reinforces the enjoyment of large groups of players. -Etc. Every year, we talk to hundreds of retailers and they invariably tell us that AB is a sales tool for them. If it's a sales tool for the retailers, then, by extension, it's a sales tool for the game company as well. If game companies didn't view AB as a sales tool, they wouldn't allow the data files to continue. And they definitely wouldn't invest the effort to work out an agreement with the data file authors that established guidelines for how the data files should be handled. |
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