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Penny Arcade - Comic - Royalties

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited August 2018 in The Penny Arcade Hub

imagePenny Arcade - Comic - Royalties

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Read the full story here


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  • KagatoACKagatoAC Registered User regular
    Seems Legit

  • T-DangerT-Danger Registered User regular
    King's the guys who make Candy Crush, right? If that's the case, I'm not sure what Tycho was expecting.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    T-Danger wrote: »
    King's the guys who make Candy Crush, right? If that's the case, I'm not sure what Tycho was expecting.

    Well not honesty.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • EnlongEnlong Registered User regular
    For a second, I thought we were referring to a company called "King A Mail".

  • OctoberRavenOctoberRaven Plays fighting games for the story Skyeline Hotel Apartment 4ARegistered User regular
    I would not be surprised to find out that King's CEO opens all his emails with that paragraph.

    I can even see that being the line he used to pick up his wife.

    Currently Most Hype For: VTMB2, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Alan Wake 2 (Wake Harder)Currently Playin: Guilty Gear XX AC+R, Gat Out Of Hell
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    T-Danger wrote: »
    King's the guys who make Candy Crush, right? If that's the case, I'm not sure what Tycho was expecting.

    Well not honesty.

    If I remember right, when it was clear they were going to lose a copyright case, they tracked down a prior art that the plaintiff may have violated, bought it, and then exerted THAT copyright to shut down the one they'd violated.

    King does honesty backwards.

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    So it was stolen art of stolen art? Kinda don't feel bad for anyone in that case, except maybe the original artist. Sounds like they got a payday at the end of it, though.

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    man this comic reminded me of how cool a game Clash of Heroes was and how the iOS version was a piece of bug-infested garbage

  • rembrandtqeinsteinrembrandtqeinstein Registered User regular
    hundred of hours in clash of heros ds.... how bad does the king version suck?

  • H3KnucklesH3Knuckles But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.Registered User regular
    edited August 2018
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    So it was stolen art of stolen art? Kinda don't feel bad for anyone in that case, except maybe the original artist. Sounds like they got a payday at the end of it, though.

    @Skull2185 I think the story Hevach is referring to went like:
    1. Company B is suing company A for copyright infringement and likely to win
    2. Company A does research into company B's history and finds something else they once did that could arguably be copyright theft from Company C
    3. Company A buys the rights to that copyright from Company C
    4. Company A then uses their new ownership and the threat of lawsuit over the other copyright to force B to accept a settlement that is much more favorable to A in the case of the A's copyright theft

    If correct, that's sadly not the first time I've seen something like that happen in the gaming industry.

    H3Knuckles on
    If you're curious about my icon; it's an update of the early Lego Castle theme's "Black Falcons" faction.
    camo_sig2-400.png
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    https://metro.co.uk/2014/02/13/candy-crush-saga-makers-to-sue-game-they-copied-4303096/

    Here's the story. I was fuzzy on most of the details, but the basic gist is there.

    In 2008, a game called Candy Crusher came out. In 2010, a game called Candy Swipe came out. In 2012, King made a game called Candy Crush Saga. All are functionally the exact same match-3 fall down puzzle game with candy themed tiles. Candy Swipe filed the relevant trademark, and was successfully blocking King from getting one. So King tracked down and bought Candy Crusher and sued to get Candy Swipe's trademark revoked.

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    Ah, yeah that is scummy.

    Also kind of impressively crafty...

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    Didn't they try to take legal action against Banner Saga, too?

  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Didn't they try to take legal action against Banner Saga, too?
    King filed a trademark for Candy Crush Saga, then Banner Saga tried to trademark their game. So King challenged them. Which as I understand is what you have to when you have a trademark so you can keep it. It's a fairly normal trademark process from what I read. More of an illustration of how trademark is dumb.

  • H3KnucklesH3Knuckles But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.Registered User regular
    edited August 2018
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Didn't they try to take legal action against Banner Saga, too?
    King filed a trademark for Candy Crush Saga, then Banner Saga tried to trademark their game. So King challenged them. Which as I understand is what you have to when you have a trademark so you can keep it. It's a fairly normal trademark process from what I read. More of an illustration of how trademark is dumb.

    I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read says that yes, trademark enforcement is compulsory if you want to hold onto yours (whereas copyright holders can choose whether to enforce on a case-by-case basis). However I don't believe a generic term like saga showing up in someone else's trademark needs to be challenged to hold onto your full 'tm'. I would have thought it would need to be something more specific to their brand identity, such as including a candy reference. Otherwise Star Wars and Star Trek (and many other Star IP's) couldn't each be trademarked.

    H3Knuckles on
    If you're curious about my icon; it's an update of the early Lego Castle theme's "Black Falcons" faction.
    camo_sig2-400.png
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited August 2018
    H3Knuckles wrote: »
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Didn't they try to take legal action against Banner Saga, too?
    King filed a trademark for Candy Crush Saga, then Banner Saga tried to trademark their game. So King challenged them. Which as I understand is what you have to when you have a trademark so you can keep it. It's a fairly normal trademark process from what I read. More of an illustration of how trademark is dumb.

    I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read says that yes, trademark enforcement is compulsory if you want to hold onto yours (whereas copyright holders can choose whether to enforce on a case-by-case basis). However I don't believe a generic term like saga showing up in someone else's trademark needs to be challenged to hold onto your full 'tm'. I would have thought it would need to be something more specific to their brand identity, such as including a candy reference. Otherwise Star Wars and Star Trek (and many other Star IP's) couldn't each be trademarked.

    King has a trademark on the word Saga. They were weeking one on Candy, but ended up settling for just ruining Candy Swipe's. This is much like Bethesda's trademark on Scrolls, in that it's bullshit designed to hurt studios too small to effectively fight back, while hiding behind the compulsory enforcement rule.

    The thing about compulsory enforcement, if you don't think you're being violated, you don't need to attack just for the sake of attacking to defend your trademark - Monster (the cable maker) has been tossed out of court many times for that, being told they had no grounds for many of the lawsuits they've brought. When you later go to shut down the guy making Eldest Scrolls III: Tomorrowind and the judge says, "But you didn't vigorously enforce your trademark against that game Scrolls!" you can argue, "Because there was no cause to expect customer confusion with that product and it did not constitute a clear attack on our brand. We feel this game does." Compulsory defense does not mean you need to waste the court's time sorting out every similar name or word overlap.

    Hevach on
  • KredKred Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    King has a trademark on the word Saga. They were weeking one on Candy, but ended up settling for just ruining Candy Swipe's. This is much like Bethesda's trademark on Scrolls, in that it's bullshit designed to hurt studios too small to effectively fight back, while hiding behind the compulsory enforcement rule.

    Yeah, it's stupid that he was granted a trademark on a single, common word. So blame the government I guess.

    Same with Monster cables. They got either a trademark or copyright, not sure which, on the word Monster and immediately sued Monster.com (a job search website from the long ago times). Then they got real cocky and trademarked the RCA connector, which is so named because RCA invented the damn thing. They sued anyone else making cables with that connector, which would be everyone making audio/video cables. That got stopped when they sued Blue Jeans Cable, a small time cable maker who happened to be a retired lawyer that specialized in copyright law. He documented the whole thing, posted it all over the internet, everyone had a good laugh.

    [/trivia]

  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    I think a distinction here is Monster (Cable and Energy) were trying to apply their trademark outside of their field. King was going videogame-to-videogame. And King does in fact have many many competitors trying to shamelessly draft in their wake using the terms "candy" and "saga". And while nobody is going to confuse Banner Saga with Candy Crush Saga, King letting the Banner Sagas of the world slide would probably give leeway for actual clones with "saga" in their names to argue "but what about Banner Saga".

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Kred wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    King has a trademark on the word Saga. They were weeking one on Candy, but ended up settling for just ruining Candy Swipe's. This is much like Bethesda's trademark on Scrolls, in that it's bullshit designed to hurt studios too small to effectively fight back, while hiding behind the compulsory enforcement rule.

    Yeah, it's stupid that he was granted a trademark on a single, common word. So blame the government I guess.

    Same with Monster cables. They got either a trademark or copyright, not sure which, on the word Monster and immediately sued Monster.com (a job search website from the long ago times). Then they got real cocky and trademarked the RCA connector, which is so named because RCA invented the damn thing. They sued anyone else making cables with that connector, which would be everyone making audio/video cables. That got stopped when they sued Blue Jeans Cable, a small time cable maker who happened to be a retired lawyer that specialized in copyright law. He documented the whole thing, posted it all over the internet, everyone had a good laugh.

    [/trivia]

    This reminds me I need to invent a project to buy more Blue Jeans cables.

  • H3KnucklesH3Knuckles But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.Registered User regular
    edited August 2018
    • Trademark is for the brand identity of products & services, ie, how people know who/what they are paying for.
    • Copyright is for creative concepts (so writing, art, music, games, etc), so that their creators can make a living from them (and thereby provide a financial incentive to make them in the first place)
    • Patents are like copyrights for inventions

    That's why trademark enforcement is compulsory whereas copyright is up to the IP owner. If you let another entity use your trademark without a license, then it is no longer a distinct identifier for your business from a consumer perspective, so you shouldn't be able to stop any other entities from using it, or so the theory goes. If Monster cable has legal protection on the name "monster", that's a trademark.

    Since copyright is just to protect your ability to profit from a concept, if someone else makes fan art or has a throwaway reference to it in their work ("You do too much, you're not Superman you know"), you don't have to go after them because it's not hurting the public perception of your product. But, if you're a company like Disney or Nintendo, who put a lot of effort into maintaining a family-friendly image, then you will probably want to go after certain kinds of fan art to try and prevent them from coming up in search engine results kids or uninformed parents might accidentally find (hence why, say, a certain website refers to Overwatch as Overlook). And of course, if someone tries to make and distribute (let alone sell) something similar to what you might have done with the concept, then they are directly impeding your ability to make money off it (hence why many fan games get C&D'ed, supposedly people might choose to hold off on buying an official product and just play the knock-offs). Naturally, publicly distributing copies of a copyrighted work without the holder's permission is right out, since that could prevent them from monetizing what they already created.

    Patents need to exist to make it worthwhile to research and develop new things, but I don't know how much discretion the holder has in protecting it. Presumably it would be like copyright, in that once you have the patent it's good until the time runs out, no matter how many other people manage to copy it.

    H3Knuckles on
    If you're curious about my icon; it's an update of the early Lego Castle theme's "Black Falcons" faction.
    camo_sig2-400.png
  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    H3Knuckles wrote: »
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Didn't they try to take legal action against Banner Saga, too?
    King filed a trademark for Candy Crush Saga, then Banner Saga tried to trademark their game. So King challenged them. Which as I understand is what you have to when you have a trademark so you can keep it. It's a fairly normal trademark process from what I read. More of an illustration of how trademark is dumb.

    I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read says that yes, trademark enforcement is compulsory if you want to hold onto yours (whereas copyright holders can choose whether to enforce on a case-by-case basis). However I don't believe a generic term like saga showing up in someone else's trademark needs to be challenged to hold onto your full 'tm'. I would have thought it would need to be something more specific to their brand identity, such as including a candy reference. Otherwise Star Wars and Star Trek (and many other Star IP's) couldn't each be trademarked.

    I actually have this bookmarked because this belief comes up so often. EFF says no, you don't have to go full police mode for trademark.

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet
    ...

    Second, Canonical is not “required” to enforce its mark in every instance or risk losing it. The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide occurs when a trademark becomes the standard term for a type of good (‘zipper’ and ‘escalator’ being two famous examples). This is very rare and would not be a problem for Canonical unless people start saying “Ubuntu” simply to mean “operating system.” Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment.¹ As one court explained:

    The owner of a mark is not required to constantly monitor every nook and cranny of the entire nation and to fire both barrels of his shotgun instantly upon spotting a possible infringer.

    Quite simply, the view that a trademark holder must trawl the internet and respond to every unauthorized use (or even every infringing use) is a myth. It’s great for lawyers, but irritating and expensive for everyone else. And when done clumsily or maliciously, it chills free expression.

    For example, Ars Technica's article about this dispute includes a large graphic with the Ubuntu logo. Will Canonical “lose” this trademark if it doesn’t “enforce” it against Ars Technica? Of course not. Ars Technica’s use is not even arguably infringement. And even if it was, failure to respond to every last act of infringement does not result in abandonment.

    ...

    ¹ See, e.g., Century 21 Real Estate Corp. v. Sandlin, 846 F.2d 1175, 1181 (9th Cir. 1988); Big Island Candies, Inc. v. Cookie Corner, 244 F. Supp. 2d 1086, 1095 (D. Haw. 2003) (“failure to sue other potential infringers does not constitute abandonment”); Wallpaper Mfrs., Ltd. v. Crown Wallcovering Corp., 680 F.2d 755, 766 (C.C.P.A. 1982) (“an owner is not required to act immediately against every possibly infringing use to avoid a holding of abandonment”); Chicago Bears Football Club, Inc. v. 12th Man/Tennessee LLC, 83 U.S.P.Q.2d 1073 (T.T.A.B. 2007) (the fact that the Chicago Bears tolerated fan sites using its marks was not relevant).

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