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Topic: My take on Stardock (Read 180699 times)
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Elestan
*Smell* controller
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Careful with that reference; I believe there is a distinction between a character and a name, and even for the characters that may be protectable by copyright, there appear to be a number of subjective factors that get weighed.
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huhlig
Zebranky food
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The copyright associated with the name is fairly powerful on it's own. Middle-earth enterprises has proven this repeatedly with 'Hobbit' and killing attempts to trademark the name. The collection of work surrounding a name makes the name itself part of the copyright. All of the races in Star Control I & II are sufficiently unique to copyright and protect each individually. Middle-Earth Enterprises has trademarked "Hobbit", in several categories. Can you find a reference where they specifically used copyright? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to get a clear example of where a name, especially a race name, was protected by copyright. Middle-earth copyright cases 1974 - Threat of copyright action from Tolkien Enterprises to TSR prompted the name changes of hobbit to 'halfling', ent to 'treant', and balrog to 'balor'.
2011 - A campsite owner from West Stow in Suffolk was threatened with legal action over his plan to build a so-called 'Hobbit hole.' When the owners asked the the Tolkien literary legacy for permission to use the Hobbit name, they received letters from lawyers claiming it was an infringement of copyright and threatened him with legal action.
2011 – A Birmingham cafe called the Hungry Hobbit was accused of copyright infringement by lawyers representing The Saul Zaentz Company, which Middle Earth enterprises is a division of. The cafe was told to phase out the use of the name on menus, websites and signs.
2012 – A Southampton pub that had been called The Hobbit for more than 20 years was accused of copyright infringement. Stephen Fry later confirmed that he and Sir Ian McKellen paid a copyright licence fee so that the pub could carry on trading as The Hobbit.
2015 - Stuart and Elise Whittaker set up Giraffe and Hobbit, a company that imports wine from small vineyards in Provence, France, and pokes fun at their difference in height. Middle-earth Enterprises has tried to block the couple's attempt to register the company, which was launched in 2014, as a trademark.
An actual court case I can find details about. Also a second one. Most seem to get settled out of court and getting documents besides news reports is kind of difficult. Note it's the copyright being enforced, not a trademark.
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 04:11:23 am by huhlig »
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rosepatel
*Many bubbles*
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A character used in a movie, book, game, etc. is copyrightable, and a character includes a name. A name might be one of the most distinctive parts of a character, the same way that courts care that a chorus is the most distinctive part of a song. The legal issue won't be whether the Star Control characters are protected by copyright, but whether there is any infringement in Stardock's new game if they copy even partial aspects of those characters.
I know Stardock is counting on the idea that there's a lot of video game clones that never get sued. But courts have a much easier time wrapping their heads around books or movies. That LOTR copyright stuff is pretty interesting, because they're suing for characters appearing on a slot machine, or quotes appearing on merchandise. These are not atypical. There are lots of times where people get in trouble for plagiarizing even a small piece of someone else's fiction. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but you don't need to lift an entire copyrighted work to infringe someone else's copyright.
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huhlig
Zebranky food
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Another thing to note is that Stardock isn't even trying to hide their infringement anymore. You can compare it to the original. Any normal person would find these two ships to have "substantial similarity" which is the general test for infringement and while "Humans" is too general a term to have copyright applied, the ship created for them in Star Control certainly isn't.
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Elestan
*Smell* controller
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A character used in a movie, book, game, etc. is copyrightable, and a character includes a name. A name might be one of the most distinctive parts of a character, the same way that courts care that a chorus is the most distinctive part of a song. The legal issue won't be whether the Star Control characters are protected by copyright, but whether there is any infringement in Stardock's new game if they copy even partial aspects of those characters. I'm wondering about the Wikipedia article, where is says:
stock characters or archetypical and hackneyed elements are disqualified from protection by virtue of the fact that they are not unique in their expression. I'm pondering whether the fact that most of the "characters" in UQM are racial archetypes rather than individuals might cause them to be considered "archetypical". The Captain, Fwiffo, Cmdr Hayes, ZEX, Talana, and the Dynarri are the only individuals you really talk with, although I suppose you could argue that each time you visit a homeworld, you're speaking with the same central authority figure.
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 06:03:02 am by Elestan »
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huhlig
Zebranky food
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A character used in a movie, book, game, etc. is copyrightable, and a character includes a name. A name might be one of the most distinctive parts of a character, the same way that courts care that a chorus is the most distinctive part of a song. The legal issue won't be whether the Star Control characters are protected by copyright, but whether there is any infringement in Stardock's new game if they copy even partial aspects of those characters. I'm wondering about Wikipedia article, where is says: stock characters or archetypical and hackneyed elements are disqualified from protection by virtue of the fact that they are not unique in their expression. I'm pondering whether the fact that most of the "characters" in UQM are racial archetypes rather than individuals might cause them to be considered "archetypical". The Captain, Fwiffo, Cmdr Hayes, ZEX, Talana, and the Dynarri are the only individuals you really talk with, although I suppose you could argue that each time you visit a homeworld, you're speaking with the same central authority figure. To the best of my knowledge that applies to archetypes considered common in culture. I.E. The damsel in distress, The old wise mentor, The token black guy killed in every horror film. They have no depth or anything making them unique and distinct from every other character sharing the same archetype. Klingons, Hobbits, Centauri, and Ur-Quan all have unique histories, lore, mannerisms, and representation that qualify them as a unique creative work. You can't copyright a vampire or a werewolf because it's a common archetype in media. You could however copyright a Camirilla Vampire or a Tribal Garou as they both have unique defining qualities.
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 05:45:33 am by huhlig »
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Mormont
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
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Well, they put it on the site banner alongside their own aliens and sent the images to a journalistic article about Origins that also implied the Ur-quan universe would be closely connected to their game. That crosses the line beyond just fan art to celebrate the game in a forum post, I think.
2017 was also the 15th anniversary of Firefly. If they put pictures of Serenity and its crew next to the Tywom (or whatever) and said "it was just to celebrate a great sci-fi universe", I doubt Joss Whedon and/or Fox (whoever owns the rights) would be very happy. Or even Star Wars, since 2017 was its 40th.
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 07:07:42 pm by Mormont »
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Kohr-Ah Death 213
Enlightened
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It's an in-game screenshot (even if mocked up)
That's an oxymoron. It can't be in-game if it's mocked up. It was made to look like it was in-game. It wasn't the best choice of words. I meant that it's supposed to look like part of the game, including UI, and not just an abstract conceptual diagram. My point is that the diagram suggests that the Ur-quan Universe is in some way accessible in the broader game, even with no direct story connection to the Scryve universe. In fact the only way I can prove that they haven't been working on it is because I and a few other modders have been working on it. Just getting the Starmap right is a pain in the ass. I can't go into exact details because of the NDA, but there will be a fan created UQM & Kessari Universe in Origins eventually. My view is that a reasonable compromise on modded content (which I agree Paul and Fred's settlement offer would need to be amended on) is that fans can do whatever they want and SD is not responsible for it, but Stardock can't officially host, directly acknowledge, or promote their work. I'm pretty sure this is how game companies generally treat fan modding that uses licensed content anyway. Well that was back in 2017 before everything went down.
I'm sure Stardock can promote it because the content used will be licensed under GPL and Creative Commons. Which means we'll have to be diligent in making sure that the respective licenses are distributed with the content we provide or P&F can have a slap at us
But Stardock can't promote it as being a part of their release since that would violate the non-commercial use portion of the CC. They could only do a simple blog post pointing out the free, non-commercial, fan-mod.
We'll be dealing mainly with the Creative Commons license since the source code from UQM will not apply too often. Starmap, ship handling/mechanics, and comm trees. Everything else can be thrown up in the air because I don't want to make a picture perfect UQM or Kessari Remake. I don't need that kind of stress in my life.
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The artist once again known as Kohr-Ah Death 213. Get your MegaMod HERE
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