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Topic: My take on Stardock (Read 328743 times)
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Ariloulawleelay
Zebranky food
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Posts: 44
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As an aside, I'd be curious to know why courts tolerate litigants filing such terse documents. It seems like the normal strategy is to reveal as little of your legal argument as possible, for as long as possible...which makes sense if you can do it, but if I were mediating a dispute, I would try to force both sides to be as forthcoming as possible at all stages, rather than hiding their cards.
I have often wondered this myself. It may help to think about these initial pleadings more in terms of preserving flexibility at this stage of the proceeding, while still meeting various technical requirements.
I do not mean to single out any one party here (as none is innocent), but take a look at Stardock's FAC. The authors use so many stacked "and/or" conjunctions that every cause of action save Count V could relate to the announcement of GOTP, the distribution of the Classic SC games, or both. Count IV is especially opaque ... I have no idea what specific conduct it is premised upon. But you can bet your bank - to borrow a phrase - that the necessary elements of each cause of action are set forth in full.
Why do it this way? Frogboy has asserted "that that one [pleading] was designed to be released by a PR firm and one was not." Obviously I cannot speak to that, but consider that almost every lawsuit begins with a certain, expected amount of information asymmetry. The higher we set the bar for specificity in initial pleadings, the more legitimate plaintiffs we inadvertently lock out of the courtroom simply because they do not know what exactly the putative defendants are doing to injure them.
Portions of Stardock's FAC may be an unpleasant read as a result, but this construction could save everyone time (and attorney fees) later on should Stardock's position on GOG (for example) evolve. Rest assured, Judge Spero's Settlement Conference Order requires the parties to formulate significantly more meaningful summaries in advance of next month's big sit-down. And federal courts are counting on most litigants settling.
Speaking of information asymmetry - though I would generally be careful not to divine too much from something as formulaic as an Answer & Affirmative Defenses - I was struck by how differently Stardock treats the 1988 License Agreement and the three addenda thereto. I cannot help but wonder if the existence of such addenda was a revelation. If so, this would explain for me timing of the trademark filings on race names, as a defensive reaction to the previously unknown second sentence of Addendum No. 3, section 1.5.
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tingkagol
Frungy champion
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Posts: 50
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Implying the settlement offers from both parties were "ridiculous" is a gross misrepresentation when clearly only one party had a ridiculous settlement offer.
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Elestan
*Smell* controller
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Posts: 431
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Even Brad has said that those early offers are extreme in the beginning just to test the waters on who will compromise on what.
They're expected to be rejected, hopefully with clues revealing where the weak points are.
Even Elestan should realize that.
Kind of like a movie hostage negotiation. Demand ridiculous things in the beginning so you'll have something to compromise on later.
That's not actually how to negotiate*. If you're serious about negotiating something, yes, your initial offer should ask for more, and offer less, than the final deal you want. But you never want to cross the line into 'ridiculous', because that's when the other party walks away from the table. The problem with Stardock's offer was that it was so far from anything P&F might have accepted, that there was no place to go from it. P&F's offer, in contrast, looks like it did ask for more than they could get (like the music, if they didn't have the copyright on it), but I could see ways to change it to get to something that could have been palatable to both sides.
Did Brad actually say that early offers are expected to be 'extreme'? I don't recall him doing so, and it's worth noting that the magistrate in charge of the negotiations said (emphasis added):
The parties are urged to carefully evaluate their case before taking a settlement position since extreme positions hinder the settlement process.
EDIT: * I'll add a caveat here. You can negotiate this way if you want to play hardball. But the magistrate clearly does not believe that this is constructive, and my own opinion on such tactics is that they're disrespectful, and I'll do my best to avoid doing business with those who use them.
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« Last Edit: April 22, 2018, 10:05:59 pm by Elestan »
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Elestan
*Smell* controller
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Posts: 431
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Help me understand folks:
Does UQM project remains intact in all scenarios? Nobody has said anything about it, and that's one of my main concerns...
So far it sounds like a Stardock "win" scenario may indeed prevent GotP from happening, while a P&F win can at-most require some modifications of SC:O, primarily around marketing. Is this understanding correct? Or does a P&F also block SC:O from being released?
If it's not clear, I am looking forward to both games being released, as well as the continued development of UQM.
The authoritative way to look at the "what happens" scenario is to look at both legal complaints (here, and here), look at the "Prayer for Relief" section, and imagine either side being given everything it asked for. First off, both parties want money for the perceived infringement on their IP by the other. But that's not really the interesting part.
To get to the interesting part, you also have to dive into what each side is claiming their IP rights cover:
Stardock claims that its IP rights include the trademarks to "Star Control", "The Ur-Quan Masters", "Super Melee", and all of the alien names from all of the Star Control games. If it wins completely, Paul & Fred will not be able to use any of those words or phrases in their games. The open source project might be able to keep using them, because it is not commercial; Brad has also said that he has no intent to interfere with the UQM project. However, even open-source projects have generally tried to avoid using trademarked phrases, because of the legal risk involved. That's why this project was renamed from "Star Control" in the first place. Ultimately, it would be up to the maintainers of each branch or fork of the project to decide for themselves whether they were comfortable enough with the legal risks to continue working on and/or offering their builds. It would also be up to P&F whether they still wanted to make their new game when they'd have to rename all the alien races (or license them from Brad).
Paul & Fred claim that their IP rights include the copyrights to all creative material from "Star Control", and that their contract specifically included the alien names, images, stories, music, and ships as part of their IP. If they win completely, Stardock will have to avoid using any of these things from the previous games. It might have to rename "Super-Melee" to something else, and take some kind of measures to avoid the creation of the original SC2 ships in their ship designer. Stardock would have to decide whether it still wanted to release the game with such restrictions. P&F also claim that the original "Star Control" trademark was abandoned in the early 2000s, so Stardock would lose it - which, as far as I can tell, wouldn't actually hurt it all that much, since it has already filed a fresh trademark application on "Star Control". I think that that just means that they would lose any particular claim on "Star Control" as it relates to the earlier games, but (presuming the new application was granted) they would still be able to release a game called "Star Control", and prevent others from doing so.
In my (non-lawyer) opinion, however, a total win by either side seems unlikely; the final result is likely to be somewhere in between.
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« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 04:52:02 am by Elestan »
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