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Games Workshop aggressively implementing new IP policy.


HollowHills

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7 hours ago, HollowHills said:

So news is going around that GW has started actively implementing their new IP policy. Individuals on Ebay are having listings taken now and warnings issued for using GW keywords on their auctions, any 3rd party models / files that mention that they could be used in GW games are also being shutdown. 

It looks like GW are using their increased financial success to return to their old and extremely aggressive pursuit of anything they don't like the look of.

I wanted to create this thread to offer a warning to anyone who might be impacted and to discuss if this has impacted you personally. 

That's completely fine, some people want to earn a living using a company's IP. Its fair to, at least, fight a little for what is yours. Maybe they could try to develop their own IPs. But is easier to parasyte a Big cow.

I personally criticised a lot gw because of Price rising but I see no problem with this

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I think it's a sort of grey area wherein to most people wargaming = Warhammer, therefore people use 'Warhammer' as a byword for 'you can use this model to play Warhammer with, even if it's not official'. 

Sure GW can enforce it, but I'm not going to clap for a multi-million/billion pound company for swinging it's weight around.

Edited by Clan's Cynic
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6 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

In this particular case, it seem kinda hard to fault GW for taking down the auction in question. I have not seen the auction that was taken down, but here's the name of another auction of that particular seller:

"Painted Miniature Age of Sigmar Goblin Rider Warhammer Squig Hopper Gloomspite"

It's an auction for this particular model from Raging Heroes:

Grotix-Pumpkin-Rider-WEB_5000x.jpg?v=1606474080

So it's patently not an "Age of Sigmar" mini, as per the auction title.

The auction that was taken down was for a Mega-Gargant proxy. If that was listed with a similar title (like "Painted Miniature Age of Sigmar Giant Sons of Behemat"), then GW seems in the right in this case. This really is not any different from shutting down other knock-off sellers. In my mind, that counts as consumer protection if anything.

There is also the additional wrinkle that this particular seller seems to be selling home resin prints of files that come with a "no commercial use" clause, which has nothing to do with GW but is kinda questionable in it's own right.

That is a lovely model, but GW was right in this case (if it was similar).

Often you can get a commercial licence for STLs (at least in the patreons I subscribe to), but it's no guarantee they actually did that.

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The model is totally fine from an IP standpoint, it was the listing it as an AOS model that violated trademark law. As long as they relist it as "AOS compatible" or something like that they should have no issues (unless ebay decides to just ignore the law in order to please GW, the way these platforms often do when it's a big corporation throwing its weight around). 

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As an artist who occasional has had to deal with IP law, it makes sense GW would have these taken down.

 

An easy way to think of this, is if a person who is unfamiliar with the product buys something thinking it’s an “official” product because of design, marketing, or name, then it infringes on IP law. That purchase only occurred because the buyer thought they were buying a product from an established company, but instead were buying a product that was trading off an already established brand. 
 

 

Edited by Mirage8112
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19 hours ago, EntMan said:

This would mean people searching for Warhammer stuff would be less likely to come across it, which I'd guess is what GW want to reduce.

People who want to buy Space Elves, Space Crusaders, Golden Angelic Knights, Corrupted Mutant Warriors etc will find them whatever. But I can see why GW wouldn't want me to chance upon the above and give my business to someone else when I search for Eldar, Space Marines etc.

That is kinda how buisness works right. A companie works to establish a  brand and then want to profit of that brand.  Clearly protecting your brand is a good idea.

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I really don't see this as anything but positive. If I'm on ebay, searching for a GW product, I expect to see legitimate GW products. If I want a 3rd party alternative, there are well known quality companies that I use such as CreatureCaster, plus others that have to be careful about the way they advertise them. I think those sites will be safe as most I see also have their own wargame rules, fluff and designs on the sites. They aren't just trading off GW IP. 

I hope this also includes them cracking down on people selling recasts of FW products. They at least used to price them low, so you could apply the old "if it seems too good to be true" adage. But I've seen some recent examples where it's clearly recast of an OOP item, going for silly money. 

Maybe I'm also bitter about the way GW were forced into now only releasing rules for models that exist. The days of an army book coming out with all sorts of rules for customising and converting your own units to represent units without rules is missed by me. 

Edited by SunStorm
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IP shall be protected - end of story

Imagine if a company tried to make money by copying Tolkien’s universe creating a tabletop game with humans, elfs and dwarfs battling against orcs and dragons. Or even worse if the same company was trying make money selling a tabletop which copied Herbert’s space opera universe with an immortal emperor of man, space crusaders, religious female orders, and psychic propelled space travel .

That would be scandalous IP infringement and would have to be immediately removed.

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2 hours ago, SunStorm said:

I really don't see this as anything but positive. If I'm on ebay, searching for a GW product, I expect to see legitimate GW products. If I want a 3rd party alternative, there are well known quality companies that I use such as CreatureCaster, plus others that have to be careful about the way they advertise them. I think those sites will be safe as most I see also have their own wargame rules, fluff and designs on the sites. They aren't just trading off GW IP. 

I hope this also includes them cracking down on people selling recasts of FW products. They at least used to price them low, so you could apply the old "if it seems too good to be true" adage. But I've seen some recent examples where it's clearly recast of an OOP item, going for silly money. 

Maybe I'm also bitter about the way GW were forced into now only releasing rules for models that exist. The days of an army book coming out with all sorts of rules for customising and converting your own units to represent units without rules is missed by me. 

I think some, but not all, of your bitterness is misplaced.  The lack of options on units really has nothing to do with Chapterhouse and the fallout, and everything to do with GW design philosophy moving to one of controlling choices (or eliminating them).

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1 hour ago, Planar said:

IP shall be protected - end of story

Imagine if a company tried to make money by copying Tolkien’s universe creating a tabletop game with humans, elfs and dwarfs battling against orcs and dragons. Or even worse if the same company was trying make money selling a tabletop which copied Herbert’s space opera universe with an immortal emperor of man, space crusaders, religious female orders, and psychic propelled space travel .

That would be scandalous IP infringement and would have to be immediately removed.

Your analogy would hold weight if that game was called The Lord of the Rings, or something so similar it could only be interpreted as the Lord of the Rings. 

This is mostly about nouns and how those nouns are used to sell a product. It's not the content or the product itself that violates IP. 

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15 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Your analogy would hold weight if that game was called The Lord of the Rings, or something so similar it could only be interpreted as the Lord of the Rings. 

This is mostly about nouns and how those nouns are used to sell a product. It's not the content or the product itself that violates IP. 

I know. I am just planning a new gloomspite army and wanted to see if trolling works for me

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15 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

As an artist who occasional has had to deal with IP law, it makes sense GW would have these taken down.

 

An easy way to think of this, is if a person who is unfamiliar with the product buys something thinking it’s an “official” product because of design, marketing, or name, then it infringes on IP law. That purchase only occurred because the buyer thought they were buying a product from an established company, but instead were buying a product that was trading off an already established brand. 
 

 

Interestingly I saw exactly this a couple of years ago.  He was a young kid who bought an army off of the bay and it was sold as a warhammer GW army.  It was all third party.

poor kid wanted to play in a GW store and the manager flatly said no.

Kid was totally innocent, when they questioned the seller he came back with " well, you can use it in warhammer".

44 minutes ago, Austin said:

I think some, but not all, of your bitterness is misplaced.  The lack of options on units really has nothing to do with Chapterhouse and the fallout, and everything to do with GW design philosophy moving to one of controlling choices (or eliminating them).

I've read the Chapterhouse transcript many times and it boils down to this...

Whether GW makes a model or not, they own the intellectual property of their universe and game world.

So if someone wanted to say make a cogfort for Cities of Sigmar freeguilds in AoS and tried to sell it as such they ultimately incur the wrath of GW.  In the same way that some third party reads in some old fiction about the TIE 'coffeetub'  fighter and decides to dream it up and make a toy of this new TIE fighter variant and market the model as such and not expect Disney to lose its s**t over it.  Whether it exists in the lore or not, it's not his property to make and sell and get a profit from.

This has also been prevalent with old models such as the company making the Kholek Suneater Model from the Total war artwork and selling it as such.

GW abandoned it's licensing model for minis ages ago - we're talking over 20 years ago, in the ancient days we had Nick Lund's Chronicle range and the Marauder Miniatures, whose sculptors were sold under the citadel umbrella and marketed in store and in the white dwarf.

For this to work as a legal entity, then lets say Chapterhouse would have gone to GW and said I want to make bits for your models.  Agreed a sum for the licence and then allwed to use the trademark under licence in that capacity.  It's what BanDai have done.  They pay GW for the right to make those dolls - they have identified a revenue potential that far outweighs what they pay GW for the right to bang those out, and in turn GW will supply them with CAD data etc.

it's the same with fantasy flight games - they pay for the privilege to use all those licences that allows X-Wing and Crisis Protocol to exist.

I've been on the other side of it, dealing with the third party company who wanted to make a model of our product and understanding that they payed hard cash to use our brand and our data.  We used to have companies coming to us to make a toy or model of our car or to use it in a computer game. Sure we'd say, it costs this much and these are the conditions. If you're happy, sign there and we'll help you with cad data, and technical info, media  etc.

Our business used to have the "web police" who would trawl ebay and the internerd for things being sold in our name that were anything but and then hand them to legal to serve cease and desist paperwork, so I do understand it.

As has been said above, there's a big difference between someone selling pumpkin riding goblin and putting in the header the keywords that make it come up in every GW related search, and leaving that out and maybe putting in the description that the model is not a GW model but in independent gaming events could be substituted for the following faction model as there are similarities, although not categorically a GW model or endorsed by GW in any way.  Read that as you will, and whether that would be enough to satisfy the great rumbling machine, who knows.

The whole not for commercial use tag is a bit lazy, the seller grabbed it from the document that was doing the rounds to do with fan art, where they (GW) mentioned that it was ok providing there was no commercial gain.  IE. you're drawing a space marine because you want to , and enjoy doing so, but aren't selling the artwork for profit.

This sort of thing always ends messy, nobody backs down when you just ask them politely- it's the way it is.

GW could open up its licensing revenue stream, but policing it would have to be very tight and controlled, and most of the time Nottingham struggles to really understand which foot is which at times, and who is responsible for what.  they've made tentative strides with bandai, funko and marvel comics, but it's highly unlikely that they will do it for the likes of the third party gun barrel and tank track makers.  

In pumpkin goblin example, they're really saying, call it what you will, but it isn't one of our models, we don't profit from it, recognise or endorse it, or want anything to do with it by association or implication so don't you dare try and rope our name and brand and games  into making it easier for you to sell.

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On 9/21/2021 at 1:54 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

In this particular case, it seem kinda hard to fault GW for taking down the auction in question. I have not seen the auction that was taken down, but here's the name of another auction of that particular seller:

"Painted Miniature Age of Sigmar Goblin Rider Warhammer Squig Hopper Gloomspite"

It's an auction for this particular model from Raging Heroes:

Grotix-Pumpkin-Rider-WEB_5000x.jpg?v=1606474080

So it's patently not an "Age of Sigmar" mini, as per the auction title.

The auction that was taken down was for a Mega-Gargant proxy. If that was listed with a similar title (like "Painted Miniature Age of Sigmar Giant Sons of Behemat"), then GW seems in the right in this case. This really is not any different from shutting down other knock-off sellers. In my mind, that counts as consumer protection if anything.

There is also the additional wrinkle that this particular seller seems to be selling home resin prints of files that come with a "no commercial use" clause, which has nothing to do with GW but is kinda questionable in it's own right.

Raging heroes have some good sculpts but Re highly derirative. Not suprised tbh and find it hard to defend their positions. 

Many of the patreon 3d model services are also patchy, lots of ‘not necrons’ out there as well as some that fill tomb king and bretonnia shaped holes in the markey.  But its a grey area and a risky way to make a business.

Maybe all these cool scuplters shouls just work up their own original IP…

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Honestly i usually rag on GW for their business practices but this aint much. If people are selling non gw models as AoS model than f**k 'em.

 

Yes they can argue they are selling them as "compatible" but are they? Can you guarantee that if i buy your 3rd party model i will be able to use it at my GW store, at my next tournament, in a random pickup game? No you can't and I am likely to meet some resistance in some of those scenarios.

 

"Warhammer compatible" is a blatant lie and being a small time seller, or model creator or studio doesn't absolve you of bad business practices. Maybe listing what the model actually is and bothering to provide actual details about the model would let potential buyers know it's suitable if they are looking for non-GW alternatives. It's actually the thing i hate most about buying non-GW proxies, no one ever provides decent details on models so you never know if it's going to be the right scale or not.

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Recently I have been quick to complain about some of the anti-consumer practices that GW has been doing (like the double book releases), but this doesn't seem like one of them. This seems like cracking down on the trend of 3rd party sellers listing every game imaginable in their title or description.

Like I was looking for Gloomspite stuff months back and getting results of 3d printed goblins titled something like "Goblin Grot Loonboss Warboss Warlord AoS LotR D&D Pathfinder" etc. Some of these sellers even lie about who the manufacturer is (labeling Wizkids or GW for some file they got off Thingiverse).

Not saying GW doesn't do anything sketchy, but this doesn't seem like a sketchy thing cracking down on people mislabelling products.

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9 hours ago, Kaleb Daark said:

Interestingly I saw exactly this a couple of years ago.  He was a young kid who bought an army off of the bay and it was sold as a warhammer GW army.  It was all third party.

poor kid wanted to play in a GW store and the manager flatly said no.

Kid was totally innocent, when they questioned the seller he came back with " well, you can use it in warhammer".

That’s quite heartbreaking actually 

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10 hours ago, Deepkin said:

Yeah imagine being the rancid nerd who gets to "hold the line" and keep GW stores pure. Bit of a joke, that policy.

 

36 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

Really your supprised that a store that sells only a single product keeps competition outside of thier own store? Really?  

 

The policy is quite strict and in fairness the manager spent a lot of time with the kid to educate him on what to look for and how to do the ebay dispute wording.

He even went as far as telling him that if he saw anything on the bay to come in and he'd look it over with him to make sure it was what it was being described as.

He (the manager) was also fighting with one hand tied behind his back.  It's policy as Zappgrot says, and to add to that, the area manager John hayden really hates in store gaming.

He's an advocate that the only people in store should be customers spending  and the only activity should be intro paint and games.

He hates 'regulars' and 'veterans' using the stores to play games and things like gaming nights as he sees them as non productive. basically just come into store to stock up and then clear off.

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GW's rules on non-GW product vary so much from store to store in practice. Some stores will (apparently, if the internet is to be believed) kick you out if they spot a single non-GW part, others don't care at all unless you really start waving around your non-GW minis and telling everyone they should be buying them instead of the GW ones. 

Same goes for the attitude towards gaming. Some are very friendly towards people playing games there, some do seem to take the attitude that you should only be in the store to spend money right then and there. 

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58 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

GW's rules on non-GW product vary so much from store to store in practice. Some stores will (apparently, if the internet is to be believed) kick you out if they spot a single non-GW part, others don't care at all unless you really start waving around your non-GW minis and telling everyone they should be buying them instead of the GW ones. 

Same goes for the attitude towards gaming. Some are very friendly towards people playing games there, some do seem to take the attitude that you should only be in the store to spend money right then and there. 

Very true.  As I say, John Hayden the area manager drives  (enforces his) culture of the stores in our locality.

Way back when, I was in that store painting, and I over heard him having a go at the store manager about me, not even having the curtesy to close the door to the back of the store.

It was along the lines of "what's he doing here, why did you allow it, just get rid of him, those tables are for recruiting " etc. etc.

He tried to tell him that me painting and hobbying in that store was the difference between me going to the indipendent retailer down the road and getting the product for 25% less and coming in that shop and paying full whack. - that and I was one of his best customers.

John wasn't having it.  While they were still thrashing it out I just packed my stuff up and left.

The other guy behind the till was mortified.  I got my three boxes of skullcrushers refunded and left.

After that I used to get a text heads up "Don't come in today unless you're buying and leaving - John's in the shop".

It's tools like Hayden that make me really not have a problem with not giving GW my money.  He's hardly great PR material.

I do have to thank him in many ways as in that day's events, he made me go into the independent retailer and I dropped nearly 300 on x-wing stuff as the group that were in there invited me to join them and I enjoyed it so much that I thought stuff it, I'll get a great big bundle right now.

Edited by Kaleb Daark
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Curiously this "varies from store to store" thing used to be (recently-ish and maybe still is?) actual GW policy, where it was down to the manager/area manager's discretion. It even extended to things like Forge World miniatures, including simple variants of GW minis, on the basis that they might confuse new customers or from a blunt attitude that if you can't buy it here in-store, you're forbidden from using it even if it's a GW product.

In a sense it's an understandable attitude - like most similar retail environments these managers have their own stressful and harshly monitored sales targets - but it does not speak to much in the way of joined up thinking and in practice makes for an environment where different parts of a company are set against each other, besides creating a kind of paranoid attitude in the store.

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Still, the kid genuinely thought the army he bought was actually a GW Warhammer army. And the seller knew very well what he was doing by labelling his product as such. That's what really matters here.

Cracking down on purposefully mislabelled products on second-hand websites is a good thing. I despise people who try to take advantage of innocents who aren't as knowledgeable as miniature veterans.

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3 hours ago, Zappgrot said:

Really your supprised that a store that sells only a single product keeps competition outside of thier own store? Really?  

No, though I am slightly surprised by the amount of people who think an international corporation deserves their undying loyalty and defense.

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