Wizards Derail Kaiju Combat Kickstarter Over IP Issues

[mattaui]

Gee, advocating violence against people you disagree with? Losers, or both sides, shot in the head? That's pretty barbaric. Good thing we've got laws, and lawyers, to defend against such things.

As has already been stated, this is just the nature of the way trademarks work. If you've got a game with a trademark, even if it's generic sounding on its face, you're going to have to protect it, or you lose the ability to protect it later. Just take a moment to examine other trademarks, many of which are single words right out of the dictionary, and you'll start to understand. While this perhaps could have been handled more tactfully, it's not the least bit unusual.

 

[1337mokro]

We want to claim this foreign word as copyright because well.... it sounds like something we made up but really just stole it from a dictionary. Same reason that Pocket Monster is a trademark (two combined words) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (four combined words) is also a trademark, the word Kaiju cannot be a trademark.

My great great great grandfather filled a trademark for the word Card, so if you want to call anything a card game you now have to license the word Card from me. That is of course a lie but this is basically the current state of copyright and trademarking law. It lasts way to long and is way to broad. IP law needs an INCREDIBLE urgent revision. Basically burn all current documents about it and start again from scratch.

 

[BramblinTheGnome]

Sending my break up letter to Wizards of the Coast explaining why I can no longer support their company. This isn't the only crappy copyright debacle they have been a part of within the last 10 years, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I will follow this up within the next few weeks with a letter to my congress members discussing the need for copyright revision. This won't be happening immediately as I'm going to be doing a little research on how the laws work and where they should go before sending that letter. I'm hoping that the more information I have going in the more likely they will listen to what I have to say.

 

[Mr. Strange]

I'm not a lawyer, but I think they are trying to defend their trademark, and not just be jerks.

That's what I thought at first. But then three months after filing their legally obligated paperwork they contact Kickstarter directly to have the page shut down? That's beyond "legal defense of tradmark" by at least one unit of jerkishness.