[quote who="Elestan" reply="531" id="3711761"] That link doesn't work for me, though it might be my ad-blocker. Even though the renewal period is longer, you still have to keep using the mark: Nonuse of a mark for three consecutive years creates a legal presumption that the mark has been abandoned. [/quote] Elestan, again.. the issue you are running into is your superficial knowledge of trademark law. You posts appear to imply a significantly overstated
[quote who="Elestan" reply="511" id="3711659"] Paul and Fred were not working under a typical contractor arrangement when they developed SC1&2. They had a negotiated contract that specified who owned which IP rights. [/quote] ^ This. You actually have no basis in knowledge to make that statement. It doesn't make it better because you qualify it is in dispute. Just like all of your posts, you clearly biased the determination of the law to benefit Fred
[quote who="Elestan" reply="508" id="3711654"] Quoting Pyro411, reply 506 Unless somebody can successfully locate and represent a previous precedent for Paul & Fred, where assets owned by a publisher would revert back to a contractor and/or their subcontractors, things will not look good for Paul & Fred. Now u
I am sure you are. The burden is on you to provide proper support for your "legal analysis." You are more than willing to post your "legal analysis" of different potential issues in this dispute, but you've yet to provide any citation or quote from an actual source of law that would prove you have even a basic understand of the underlying law at issue. You also have yet to directly respond to the argument that you do not know all of the relevant facts in this dispute, an argument that multipl
[quote who="Elestan" reply="486" id="3711484"] Quoting eride, reply 482 They banned me from UQM for pointing out that they didn't understand the law and that all of their legal conclusions were grossly incorrect. It isn't too much to ask that someone actually know more than a generic summary they read on a legal topic before the
That is exactly what *I* was asking that the posters who were stating their legal analysis provide. I asked for specific citations to sources of law for their legal analysis, and not a single poster did. Their judgments were decidedly against Stardock and provided no factual basis for their analysis. Amusing how I am supposed to spend hours researching and writing a post to support my statement that they aren't basing their legal analysis on actual law, yet they aren't expected
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="481" id="3711427"] Quoting Elestan, reply 480 Brad has requested that I not discuss the case here, so I'll refrain from speaking further than that. My issue isn't discussing the case. It is that you choose to make legal conclusions or try to perform Internet l
Bleybourne, I almost certainly would buy it if Paul and Fred release it. However, I share your apparent sentiment that such a release is unlikely to occur. Slightly off-topic (but for this thread, very on topic *cough*), I just had a chance to check out the most recent GalCiv3 release and I wanted to thank Brad for his hard work on *that* franchise. I've played GalCiv since the beginning and I was incredibly disappointed with GalCiv3. It just wasn't fun. I am really enjoying it now af
I wasn't making the argument that you actually think you know more about the subject than Brad but that is what your posts implicitly suggest. It looked to me you were claiming, through multiple posts, that you don't believe that the mark itself was worth what Stardock paid if it was solely for the "brand" name. Brad gave multiple explanations and analogies, none of which persuaded you from your "gut" feeling. I don't know how much it costs to create a brand from nothing (but Br
[quote who="Timmaigh" reply="423" id="3710373"] So in other words SupCom 2 sold more than Ashes to this point, right? You assume its because the brand, and its surely to certain extent true, but you need to consider other reasons, why its not as successful. With SupCom 2, the fans of the original game expected more of the same. That did not happen for various reasons. Ashes, on other hand, was in its beginning: - mor
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="382" id="3709859"] The 1988 agreement has no effect on us one way or the other. We are currently not inclined to put the classic games back up for sale either way for support reasons (DOS box) when we can just point people to UQM. [/quote] Completely understand the above. As a frequent purchaser of old DOS games from GOG (they do a great job attempting compatibility, btw).. I can see why a publisher who cares about customer sentiment w
Telonious, I want to start by apologizing for calling you out in my post regarding "arm chair" lawyers. I went back over your posts and I think I conflated you with Elestan. Now to my post.. [quote who="Talonious" reply="359" id="3709735"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 356 Quoting Talonious,reply 354 The popularity of "Star Control" the brand is directly related to SC1 and SC2. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be so protective of it. But do you really think that someone w
As an actual attorney (transactional, corporate law), I do want to point out that you should be extremely wary of any individual interpreting the law and applying it to the facts of this dispute (e.g. Elestan, Talonious), and stating their opinion of which party is in the wrong on any given issue. There is an awful lot of armchair lawyering going on in the forums. IP law is notoriously one of the most difficult areas of the law to practice. Even the majority of attorneys have little-t
[quote who="Talonious" reply="314" id="3709381"] The people who have heard of Paul and Fred have a pretty huge overlap with who is excited about a new Star Control game. They're the people like me who have waited 25 years for a new one. The whole reason the IP had value when it was sold was largely based on the positive feelings towards previous games in the series, which were synonymous with those two names.<br
[quote who="Timmaigh" reply="286" id="3709070"] Quoting DeepSpaceNine, reply 273 Talonius, I'm no lawyer either.. but in the broadest terms: they have since announced a game that claims to be a sequel to our trademarked IP, gone on a public offensive against us and our motives for months, and interfered with ou
I don't want to slam Star Control fans, but it isn't like the remaining fan base is even a meaningful number. The vast majority of sales were always going to be to people who never played the original Star Control games. No offense to Paul and Fred, but Star Control 1 and 2 doesn't mean anything to 99.99% of gamers today. The only people who care about their involvement in the franchise number in the low ten thousands. Stardock didn't drop millions into this game to sell it to a handf
I read the court filings linked on the arstechnica article. Now I know why NightShadowPT brought this back up. Apologies for my mischaracterization above on what IP was at issue. I hadn't read the underlying documents at the time of my response.
Fred and Paul sold the rights, Stardock later bought them from Atari the then current owner. No one forced Fred and Paul to sell the rights, they made a decision that was best for them at the time and they have to live with it. That is the way society functions. Stardock purchased it in good faith. Stardock has invested millions of dollars into this game, something that Fred and Paul didn't care to do for two decades until after Stardock took it upon themselves to invest money into pulling th
[quote who="joel_ds" reply="76" id="3697829"] I'm saying that I don't think they would get into this conflict if they didn't believe they could make a prima facie case. Basically I believe they're acting out of sincere belief that the facts are their side, though perhaps misguided. They have been involved in legal matters with Star Control for a long time and have probably consulted with lawyers about it well before Stardock came into the picture - they would not have released
[quote who="joel_ds" reply="74" id="3697814"] Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 73 It seems more likely F&P lawyers said you better announce a new game before we start trying to inflict harm on Stardock. It seems more likely that such cynical interpretations of their motives are conspiracy
[quote who="Natasin" reply="15" id="3680693"] I'd rather you guys have a heart to heart talk with your fan base and find out which version people would want to support. I have no intention of ever, ever playing Gal Civ III: Base now that Crusade exists. I'd rather you focused all of engineering, art, and others allocated to Crusade and continue with that version. I feel like this is the same conversation that Singularity had and Escalation ended up being the version people wanted overall
For those of us who have taken a break from the forums.. what is the lifetime founder? What build do we get by entering the code (final build, a beta)? Will the release build download and overwrite this build automatically in two days? Will the release build break saves from this build? Just wondering if I should wait, or start playing now. :D
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="24" id="3657821"] Another thing I paid my Founders fee for was the forum presence of a friendly but gloating CEO discussing his vaunted AI and its continuing multi-year mission to dominate GalCiv players everywhere. My full time move to GalCiv III doesn't start until November 28. And I won't be gloating. That's too easy. You have a misunderunderstanding
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