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Serious question here. Why is ro-gan missed? What happened?
He was banned by AZS sometime in March, I believe. As to why, I will not post what I have heard as it is not from my first hand knowledge and I do not like rumor-mongering.
6th Place: WWE National Qualifier Finals, June 2008
Four Points Gaming Club: South
WWE National Qualifier Finals, June 2008, all four members of Four Points Gaming Club make the Top 8!
Well, it is how the system works. Though a smarter time to do this would have been as the Ghost Rider movie was preparing to open and then try to block it's release.
This is similar to Marv Wolfman's litigation before the Blade movie came out. I won't get into the differences (I assume most would find them boring) but this guy could have a flaming leg to stand on if he is correct and no one registered the copyright. Big oops.
Best job I ever had, for a year I was an attorney in Marvel's legal department. As a lifelong comic fan, it was awesome answering legal questions about what they could and could not do, show, etc. in the comics. Part of that was some in-depth comic analysis for the Wolfman litigation, since Wolfman also claimed legal ownership of the Richard Ryder Nova character. He claimed to have created it during college and brought it to Marvel even though it was done under work for hire agreement. It was awesome to be able to read his college comics and detail some fine differences between that and what he did for Marvel. A lot of the work I did could not have been done by a non-comic book fan. I would often have to explain how things were different two or three times to the attorneys handling the case so they could understand why a subtle difference can make the characters distinguishably different.
If anyone is interested in specifics, PM me and I will fill you in or just post it here on the Realms. Oddly enough, to show you the state of Marvel circa 1999-2000, I never signed any non-disclosure agreement about the work I performed. I would have but they never presented me with one. Unlike other lawsuits I was involved in and had to sign NDA's (that was for you ro-gan, you are missed).
Any way, my .02.
I never heard about the Wolfman lawsuit. What was the result from that? Did he win or lose? Now that you mention Wolfman claiming ownership of Nova, I can see some similarities between Nova's flight powers & Starfire's.
I have been in trial the past two days, I will post over the weekend.
Nice to know someone is interested.
6th Place: WWE National Qualifier Finals, June 2008
Four Points Gaming Club: South
WWE National Qualifier Finals, June 2008, all four members of Four Points Gaming Club make the Top 8!
Damn intrested I love legal jargen used to debate about my rights to my teachers back in elementary and junior high. Thats sweet thats theres no nda on what you got I love seein behind the scenes stuff.
I can desire to dream cant I?
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Once again I say that I won't be completely happy until we've done every character in HeroClix.
I thought copyrights needed to be actually defended for them to not pass into public domain.
No, that's just the line of cow by-product a lot of warez sites toss out hoping it's true. Doesn't matter if the item is being actively published or not, or (for a fair bit of time) if the copyright owner is out of business or dead. Lines tossed out like "the movie studio is out of business or isn't releasing the movie, and they haven't busted anyone yet, so that means its public domain" is always either complete ignorance or a complete con job attempt. Copyrights are like cockroaches in that they don't go away just because you don't see them, and they're just as hard to prevail against once they're in place. Copyrights can be selectively defended (and even not at all) for decades, after which the owner can still decide to come down like a ton of bricks on an infringer. If the copyright is registered, the amount of damages they can recover can go up significantly. While options on defending and maintaining copyrights are very flexible, the protection they provide is relatively limited. Basically only the exact work, or very clear derivitives thereof, are covered.
Trademarks have to be defended - vigorously, in fact, as their value is directly related to uniqueness of name recognition and damages recoverable directly linked to value. I.e. wait until the trademark is infringed to the point where the name is ubiquitous, and your recovery for lost value of that trademark will be equally worthless. On the other hand anything that can be reasonably taken for the trademark can be considered infringement, even if some aspect of it (the image associated with the name, or the name with the image) is very different. And prior art isn't even an issue - which is why a certain 400+ year old Scottish Bed & Breakfast actually got nailed by a certain grease burger pit chain for carrying the family name.
Patents are somewhere in between, requiring a little more defending than copyrights (or, more accurately, maintaining and renewal of the patent) and more work than trademarks in proving infringement. Unlike either, patents can be challenged and overturned not just on prior concept issues, but on the very basis of the process being unsuitable for patent law.