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Trademark Troll Is At It Again [Update]
Denver, 5:30 AM
Sun Nov 22
17 posts in the last 24 hours
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Trademark Troll Is At It Again [Update] |
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07/11/09
All of you can suck it. I want my money.
07/11/09
I recall we did a conversion of a game in about 6 weeks for the ST.
Now what I am saying is that he did try it on once with me but
I would not stand for his BS as I had heard it all before a few examples -
He would insist changes not agreed to in the original agreement so the developer would have to work another month without payment , most times he would drag this on until the very last moment an example was for the development on Inside Outing (Raffles) on the Atari-ST.
The artist who I knew was asked to create assets for the game in or around a month, this dragged on until the very last moment then the artist was dropped and the in-house team would finish the little tidy up work meaning the original artist only got paid a small advance.
So this is how he worked with a lot of people including the coders.
When I was there we had about 3 coders, 2-3 artists including myself. A few people worked from home but again went through this same process.
Whenever he was confronted about these verbal changes, he totally denied wanting that work done so why should he pay for it as it took longer to make the game then the original work contract specified this was a far too common practice he tried with everyone and got away with it for so long untill he could not get good people to make those games anymore.
A few of the coders left to work with the Bitmap Bros. some of them set up other game studios which I went to work with along with the other artists.
The wreck that was left was a few terrible conversions of the last generation of Edge games, nothing came of the Marvel deal apart from the Punisher it was only released on 16-bit.
The X-Men game was dead anyway, Fairlight on the Atari ST never saw the light of day and was canned in favour of the Taito games.
It has been a shock to see this all dragged up after all this time but I am sure he will get what he deserves and I know there are a lot of people back here in the UK that will be happy when this twat is not invloved in the games industry anymore.
I have been in contact with a few ex-The Edge/Softek developers and they should be able to shed some more light on him if thats the right word to use.
07/12/09
In honesty, the current media blitz on the guy implies to me that his days within the industry are numbered, and that at least his position within the IGDA is going to be jeopardised (his association with the group bringing their own credibility into question, or something along those lines)... It'll be interesting to see their reaction to the firestorm...
that said he's been at this shit for years seemingly so who knows what'll happen?
07/11/09
Even if the person who owns the plot land knows that he or she has somebody trespassing on that land, unless they kick that person off of their land, call the police for trespassing, and/or give them explicit instructions to set foot on that land again, the squatter can legally take possession of the land that they take care of provided that their ownership of that property is:
Open (they aren't hiding the fact from anyone)
Continuous (they stay on the land without leaving)
Exclusive (nobody else but that person uses it)
Adverse (without the owner's permission)
Notorious (it must be known to others as well)
It's an acronym: OCEAN. U.S. Property law states that after twenty years of adverse possession, you are legally entitled to that you have adversely possessed. I suspect it's the same way with intellectual property as well in that if he has not filed suit against the publishers of certain other games (he can't single out large companies, he has to file suit against ANYONE using the word "EDGE" in a game-related capacity), he has failed to chase intellectual property squatters from his intellectual property and may find his cases unlikely to go to court due to him no longer possessing the rights to use the word "EDGE" in a game-related capacity.
Again, patent law may be wholly different from property law, but most areas of law share similar concepts, adverse possession being one that has been around for many years.
Can somebody else help me out on this one?
07/11/09
07/11/09
07/11/09
But seriously common words should not be allowed to be trademarked. Also a person who has no work to show except in the industries except for lawsuits against companies for using a common word should not be in the industry or should be kicked out of it until he does something again. The website is also nothing more then a placeholder and whoever names their games seems to basically pull them out of a hat full of nouns just so that they could sue another group for using another common word. Also the website is nothing more then a splash page that leads to nothing.
07/11/09
07/11/09
07/11/09
07/11/09
HAHHAHAAH
I would love to see that happen!
07/11/09
If you ask me, the amount of people willing to say that Tim has screwed over this person or that person is enough evidence to prove he is a giant douche and a shit sandwich combined.
07/11/09
07/12/09
07/11/09
07/11/09
Apparently, round 2 of Screwing Up D-Bag's Wikipedia Entry has started...
@bobtheduck: Do it. Now. :)
07/11/09
Twas good stuff. Now I imagine another attack incoming on his still existing EDGE games page.
Oh, also, the biggest section of the EDGE games page was changed to be about the legal disputes - letting everyone know what his "game company" is most well known for.
07/11/09
haha i just looked up EDGE games on wikipedia and it has this written :D
History
Edge Games was founded in 1979 by trademark troll Tim Langdell, originally as Softek Software (later Softek International Ltd.) in London, England.[1] In 1990, Edge Games moved its headquarters from its home of the prior decade in London's Covent Garden to Los Angeles (Pasadena).
it says he's the trademark troll :D :D :D
07/11/09
07/11/09
That's all we really want to say, right?
07/11/09
07/11/09
I appreciate this edgy comment.
07/11/09
07/11/09
He was likely granted it on the grounds that he did not want any other companies to name themselves Edge, but has now decided that telling game makers and other producers not to use "Edge" is within his rights because he feels that that constitutes defense of his trademark. He is not really within his rights to troll the copyright like this, but can get away with it because most people aren't interested in going to court over it and wasting valuable time and money over the use of a word.
07/11/09
Sure. But if you don't properly defend that trademark, or you abuse it horribly, you might find that you end up having said trademark legally, and quite permanently, stripped from your posession. Bayer had the Aspirin trademark stripped for failure to defend it, and if this twink sues over any use of the word "edge" in any game title (when it's actually trademarked for the name of his company), I wouldn't be surprised at all if he gets bitch-slapped by the US legal system for trying to spread the trademark effect around too liberally. And I certainly hope that's exactly what happens.
07/11/09
in other words: None.
IANAL, but from what I understand(through much reading), trademark challenge can only be applied in the event that the use of the word is intended to or may cause a dilution of the original brand and is specific to that which it is applied.
So there's no case at all against a game name since the trademark was applied to a studio.
There's also no case even if the studio had the word "Edge" in it unless the 'offending' studio is intentionally attempting to profit off the plaintiff's brand. Since the plaintiff has no brand presence at all, the use of the word "Edge", even in studio context, becomes generic.
This is why Microsoft has no hold on the trademark "Windows" or "Office" but rather only "MS|Microsoft Office" and "MS|Microsoft Windows" and the associated logos.
07/11/09
I'm sure that if anyone tried to market a non-MS OS named "Windows" or a non-MS office suite named "Office", they'd find that the trademarks _do_ actually cover use of a generic word for a very specific purpose. That's essentially what led to the Apple Corps vs. Apple Computer scuffle, which was only sorted out by the agreement that Apple Corps would never market computers and Apple Computers would never market music (tres ironic, what with Apple Computers being pretty much just the iPod/iTunes/iPhone Company these days).
07/11/09
07/11/09
Yeah, they did, but I believe they actually lost this time, on the grounds that Apple Computers is not actually _producing_ the music they sell. And the specific thing that got Apple Corps all litigious again was that iTunes was selling exclusive tracks, and they'd attached the Apple Computers logo to the iTunes store. If they'd stuck to reselling music that you could buy elsewhere, giving away exclusive tracks, or even kept iTunes fully divorced from the Apple Computers logo, the lawyers might have remained chained up in the front yard. I'm not entirely sure why they didn't win, since it seemed like a pretty cut-and-dried violation of the original agreement to me.