"Games Workshop: All Space Marines are OUR Space Marines" Topic

MCA Hogarth is one of a new crop of paperless publishers that are cropping up all over the place, writing for Kindle and Nook only, and selling through Amazon.com, B&N and other epub outlets. Her last book, SPOTS THE SPACE MARINE, came out in December of last year and sold on Amazon.com. Games Workshop took umbrage with the words "Space Marine" in the title and filed an injunction to remove the book from sale. In the ensuing imbroglio no less than the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Corey Doctrow jumped in to elevate Games Workshop's actions to a national stage. Details Here: link

I am not a huge fan of Games Workshop's business practices, but I acknowledge their right to protect their intellectual property. It's just when the concept of "protection" extends to the English language itself, and covers terms that have been in parlance since the 30s, well, they don't look like savvy businessmen, more like hysterical bullies.

Walt O'Hara

Yup!

Back on sale!

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ALL publicity is good publicity, at least in the eyes of some.

I wonder if "Outer Space Marine" is still available. Maybe I should TM it now and then sue GW for partial IP infringement…

A dyed in the wool "Everything GW does is part of an Evil Master Plan" conspiracy theorist would say that this is a setup. They will give in, and look magnanimous. But that is part of the "advance 4 steps, retreat 1" Plan.
Bwahahahahaha!

There is no bad publicity here, since it will not affect their core market in any way. It will only off fans of low volume sales written science fiction. Wow. That hurts.
The effect is akin to me boycotting Jerry Pournelle because he was rude to me once at a party. I must have cost that SOB at least $2.48 USD in royalties!

I always wondered about how Mark Rattner's 1977 Space Marines wargame rules could come into play in this fight.

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(which yes, I owned these, but not like as everything was "fill in an animal name"-man aliens. Ratmen, snakemen, fishmen… and mentioned that once to him at a con not knowing who he was and he was ed. He did not like starguard as he felt the weapons were too wimpy, although IIRC his super duper weapons were not that workable on an average sized table.)

> It will only off fans of low volume sales written science fiction

Of course even low volume science fiction sales are one of the very few things lower then miniatures game sales. (lets face it, even GW is peanuts comared to big boy corporations)

The effect is akin to me boycotting Jerry Pournelle because he was rude to me once at a party. I must have cost that SOB at least $2.48 USD USD in royalties!

I had a friend get into a verbal no prisoners argument with him about Communism at a con once. (They know each other.) A couple of years later I was getting him to autograph a copy of one of his and Niven's works, and asked him to dedicate it to my friend. Pournell says, "You know we don't get along right?" So I say, "All the better as this is his birthday present." Pournell did chuckle a bit, and wrote a nice note.

Honestly, SF literature is a huge market. Yet, there are genres within that genre. I like gritty scifi, space battles, and even pulpy Flash Gordon type. My father prefers science and engineering in his books and less of the splashy future war. He also reads Star Trek and does read the original Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
If a person does read all the scifi out there, I really doubt they'd have time to devote to gaming. I read fifty-nine books last year on a variety of subjects. I only know this as that is the number of new books my NOOK held when I deployed. I also managed perhaps six wargames between missions. I painted nothing and only built a few models on leave.
More than 60 scifi books are released in a year. Job, family, and body maintenance will diminish the time for any leisure pursuits… not to mention available disposable income.
Certainly this episode will dent GW, but it isn't going to be a deathblow by any means. I really doubt it will impact the quarterly earnings very much.

And those low volume sales are usually used to feed some authors family.

Jerry pornelle was rude to John the OFM, I must buy all his books now, so it weill make him royalties!

I was a YFM at the time, a mere gopher at a conference.

I believe that all the loud proclamations of "I will NEVER buy another GW product!" from all the guys here on TMP who don't buy the stuff anyway will shake GW to the core. 8)=

I won't buy any either, but I stopped years ago simply because I found other game systems more satisfying. I couldn't care less about this whole TM kerfluffle but it's been interesting to watch the outrage build.

I easily spend a couple thousand a year on the hobby. That said, I'm not a big Games Workshop customer to begin with, so lost sales to me directly probably aren't going to hurt them much. However, there are people who I was planning to introduce to the hobby through X-Wing and Space Hulk. Now I will likely use X-Wing and Project Pandora or Guncrawl.

I must have cost that SOB at least $2.48 USD USD in royalties!

You know, there was probably a time in his life where he was $2.50 USD short on cash to buy something and had to leave it behind. Sweet revenge!

Do you think all of this discussion now deserves it's own Message Board??

(And I am kidding, btw…)

I am not a huge fan of Games Workshop's business practices, but I acknowledge their right to protect their intellectual property. It's just when the concept of "protection" extends to the English language itself, and covers terms that have been in parlance since the 30s, well, they don't look like savvy businessmen, more like hysterical bullies.

Mr. O'Hara, this is IMHO merely further conclusive proof that Forrest Gump's mama was right all along about *stupid.*

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

"My mama always says that 'stupid is as stupid does!'"
- Forrest Gump

The problems will come if this story appears in the more mainstream media outlets. Parents will see this, get ticked off, and then not give money to their kiddies (GW's core demographic) to buy GW products. There is such a thing as bad word of mouth and marketing.

Is GW's core demographic still little children? You could have fooled me.

which yes, I owned these, but not like as everything was "fill in an animal name"-man aliens. Ratmen, snakemen, fishmen… and mentioned that once to him at a con not knowing who he was and he was ed. He did not like starguard as he felt the weapons were too wimpy, although IIRC his super duper weapons were not that workable on an average sized table.

I own copies of both editions of Space Marines and just about every edition of Starguard. Anyone who asserts that the weapon systems in Starguard were "…too wimpy" clearly forgets that the rules included Slaver Disintegrators, starship caliber laser cannons, and tactical nuclear warheads… funny thing is, is that in Mr. Ratner's Space Marines nuclear weapons were no longer possible due to "Nuclear Dampening Field generators," while the largest direct fire weapon was a direct fire blaster cannon that reached to the horizon… seriously…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Is GW's core demographic still little children? You could have fooled me.

Anyone old enough to shave is apparently referred to by GW's leadership as "beardies," Mr. O'Hara. It is not a term of endearment, and yes, AFAIK their target market remains each new crop of 12-year-olds, with anyone else being seen as a minor bonus that won't otherwise be missed if they drop off the face of the earth.

IMHO if this tale is anything, it is a small, object lesson in the capacity for hubris on the part of corporate "aristocrats" and those willing to enable them for a paycheck.

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

There is no bad publicity here, since it will not affect their core market in any way. It will only off fans of low volume sales written science fiction. Wow. That hurts.

Actually, it has ticked off SF fandom and the geek world in general, bringing criticism from John Scalzi and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and Wil Wheaton (now a bit of a geek guru). "So what— they're not GW's market." Well, yes and no. Because the gamers and geeks that gave GW their early success are now adults, and also at the core of the new technology economy. Such people are GW's market's parents— the ones who supply the dough and drive the kiddies to the stores, which are not typically located in convenient kid-centric places (like shopping malls or significant shopping centers). P*** off the parents, and GW's kiddie market can't make their purchases.

Think about it: GW may target their products to kids, but they don't actually market to kids. Where are the GW ads? The GW kids shows? The GW product placements? There aren't any. So how does GW get the kids interested? Through older kids and parents who grew up in the genre, playing with GW products. Sure, the kids don't read or know about GW's bad publicity, but the older kids and the parents do. And that matters. It matters a lot.

GW was on okay footing as long as the parents they were ticking off were the straight-laced types or the pacifist lefties who either didn't like the over-the-top gore and nihilism and semi-demonic elements or hated the thought of "war" play in general. But who cared? They weren't gonna buy anyway, and their mutual disdain attracted the counter-culture crowd and the militaristic types. GW was on good ground with that rebellious market. "We're a rebel company— -off the grannies and nannies!" was the message, and it sold.

But now GW is -ing off the counter-culture, rebellious crowd by becoming the main-stream corporate entity that market hates in the first place. *And* GW is -ing off the science fiction fandom crowd by violating Wil Wheaton's First Rule (google it). That sort of mistake has legs— and the twin facts that Amazon has reinstated the e-book and GW has issued a weasel-worded back-tracking statement reveals the truth of that. GW kicked the anthill one too many times, and for once they actually realize it, if only because Amazon was influenced enough by the bad PR to say, "Wait a minute— it ain't our problem, and we're not taking the heat for this!" -ing off the biggest distributor of games and books on the planet is not smart business, whatever your market is.

So the bad PR is actually having effect. It's not minor to GW at all. I'm not saying it's all that major, but it's bigger than just a lone blip in Space Hulk; this blip had some teeth to it.

Now, being realistic, I honestly don't expect much to change with GW. I suspect their weasel-word "it's still our trademark (*sulk, sulk*)" statement is probably gonna be as much backpedaling as they're going to do. They'll wait out the end of this nine-day wonder and go back to business as usual. But maybe, just maybe, they'll be a little more careful about where they swing their boots— because those ants can sting.

Yep. GW is evil. Old news. And, no, they are not going anywhere any time soon, despite anybody's wishes. Still, I recommend not buying their products for lots of other good reasons. No love lost.

What gets me about all of GW's "mine mine" attitude is just how much of their various universes are so blatantly "borrowed" from other authors, comics, movie, etc..

It's really a pity that Tolkien, Morcock, Herbert, Giger, 2000AD (just to name a few) and a host of other entities can't come out of the woodwork to gang up on them for a change.

-Eli

How many of these threads are there? Tango must've started at least half a dozen by now without realising it.

@John: "If a man is not nice to the waiter, he is not a nice man." Or something to that effect.

How many of these threads are there? Tango must've started at least half a dozen by now without realising it.

And the fun is that you can bad-mouth him here, and he'll never know, 'cause he never reads any threads but his own.

The problems will come if this story appears in the more mainstream media outlets.

You mean like the BBC News Web-site ?

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Didn't mean to turn this into another one of those threads, but this issue just really irritated me. You can PROVE the term Space Marine goes back to the 30s or earlier, quite easily. This is more than GW price gouging or bullying a manufacturer of "lookalike" miniatures out of business, it's an attempt to co-opt the language itself. I've not been a customer of GW since their last price raise, and for a large part they're off my radar. I just thought that this was a little over the top ridiculous, even for GW.

BTW, Parzival, great response!

Walt

What I don't get is the whole 'fake' geek rage over this. GW has trademarked 'Warhammer' for decades now, does that mean GW has come down on anyone that has used the term 'warhammer' in their books? Nope, I still see the usage of the warhammer in (fantasy) literature. But i don't see Warhammer in any title besides titles licensed by GW. It's not as if GW made that word or the first one to use it in fantasy literature, but there's no great geek rage about that.

Now GW comes down on someone using Space Marine in their book title and everyone thinks it's ridiculous! But that's the nature of trademarks, you use it as a brand and no one else in the same branch can use it. There's a trademark on " Happens"…

And the kicker is that by law you have to enforce your trademark or you loose that trademark.

And the kicker is that by law you have to enforce your trademark or you [lose] that trademark.

I made the point in the other thread that GW's trademark is limited to games and toys, not books. GW could try to extend the trademark to books through the normal process, but such an application would (no doubt) be contested, and GW would not receive such a trademark.

Instead, GW is trying to use the courts to extend the trademark without actually going the usual route. If they can pick on a little guy with no lawyers, they can get the precedent set and sneak under the radar of the big guys with lawyers (who would be the ones contesting a book-centered trademark).

At this point, if I'm Baen or any other big SF publishing house, I've got a law clerk watching every filing that GW makes, because they will try this again.

GW has trademarked 'Warhammer' for decades now, does that mean GW has come down on anyone that has used the term 'warhammer' in their books?

Point of order— "warhammer" isn't actually a word (look in a dictionary). It's the combination of two words into one for stylistic effect. So if someone is writing a book which includes a war hammer, and they wish to use proper English, they will not use the term "warhammer" at all. So I, for one, have no complaint with GW on that point. "Warhammer" is their game title, and that's what it means.

"Space marine," however, is an established phrase in the English language and does not mean merely GW's game or game products. So, yes, I do disagree with their attempt to claim exclusivity to it. I think the trademark should never have been granted on the grounds of being too common or generic.

And the kicker is that by law you have to enforce your trademark or you [lose] that trademark.

Oddly, what exactly would be the downside of losing that trademark? GW's market is a niche one, and one that is very aware of the product being offered, and very much focused on the "look and feel" of that product, which is already GW's IP. Broad use of the term "Space Marine" in the SF community— even in the games market— is not likely to dilute GW's IP, nor affect their market share or profit at all. People don't purchase "Space Marine" products from GW because of the name "Space Marine," nor would they be confused by other products marketed under the name because such products would not be able to match the design, which is GW's IP (as opposed to the concept, which is not).

As I stated elsewhere, only fans of GW associate "space marine" with a GW product— the gaming world and science fiction world at large do not, nor is either likely to be confused by different uses of the term by different companies. Good grief, who would be so confused as to mistake, for example, the "Colonial Marines" of Aliens with GW's "Space Marines", even if they both had the "Space Marine" title? They look nothing alike. I just don't see an issue of "confusion" arising here that would at all affect GW.

I will agree with Howard Tayler (writer of Schlock Mercenary) on a point he made while discussing this issue, which is that "space marine" is a bit of a hokey term anyway. It sounds straight out of the 1930s (which it is), an attempt to sound science-fictiony, rather than a likely contemporary term for the soldiers stationed aboard a spaceship. Those would either simply be referred to as "marines," or pick up some slang term similar to "jarheads," or "leathernecks." (He suggested "magbooters," assuming that magnetic-soled boots might be standard issue for boarding parties attempting to seize control of a spaceship. Well, maybe.) Fair point, but a side issue, really. Though if a writer wanted to pen an homage to Heinlein, E.E. Smith, et al, "space marine" would be the term to use, and frankly such literary precedent should be in favor of the term being open for use by anyone.

Come to think of it, what would happen if somebody issued commercial reprints of the original Bob Olsen "Space Marine" stories, both in hardcopy and online? The titles of those stories are protected under copyright law, just as are the stories themselves. Could GW expect to mount any successful legal challenge to the reprint, assuming it went to court? I'm guessing the answer is "no." Would that effectively break their trademark entirely? I don't know.

And the saga continues:

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I smell a Streisand Effect starting to boil, but I could be wrong…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Given enough good evidence and prior use of the term (and some decent lawyers) even the mighty can take a kicking.

Apple loses Brazilian iPhone trademark ruling (see this example link )

Ok, you may say, just Brazil, not the whole world. But it is South America's biggest market (apparently).

The company had registered the name a decade ago or so and had a legitimate reason to use it when they brought out a new phone and Apple complained. And Apple lost.

What it needs is simply someone big enough (like a proper book publisher) to toe-to-toe' it with Workshop, see them in court and beat them.

As they undoubtedly will (bearing in mind the evidence of prior useage in literature).

John T

I seem to recall that Jim Dunnigan back in the 70's wanted the copyright the term "Nazi's" for SPI and got shot off the board by the courts. The court held, I believe, that you cannot copyright every day words.

Things like this come around periodically proving that even smart, rational people can sometimes be perfect loons.

Do GW have an in house legal department -maybe they don't want to be seen sitting in an office day after day tiddling their thumbs?

Just received my paper copy of Spots.

A very nicely produced paperback.

Written like a play and could be performed…perhaps outside certain shops!

Point of Order, 2: This is not a question of copyright, it's a question of trademark. Two different things. But commonality is a factor in both.

C'mon GW try out the Royal Space Marines Commandos if you dare … We will be in Afghanistan or somewhere else more dangerous ;-)