zwabbit

[quote who="Elestan" reply="241" id="3712771"]So, to clarify, are there any current statements or posts by P&F that you would consider as disqualifying GotP from being an independent work, or is this purely spilled milk from their initial post?[/quote] What you refer to as "spilled milk" warrants continued action on Stardock's part on at least three accounts. 1) The possibility of confusion with any "sequel" to SC2 by P&F with Stardock's trademark was high enough that

If Ghosts were an independent work, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If the reference were purely nominative, this thing wouldn't be the giant charlie foxtrot it is now. P&F could have disassociated whatever story elements were in SC2 from the Star Control trademark itself, which would have freed Stardock from any obligation to care about them legally. It's because they didn't, and in fact tried to use their claimed copyright as a vector to attack Stardock's trademark that precipita

Stop trying to overgeneralize the points. My prior post was not about if a specific "work" was trademarked, but on the issue of a work causing confusion with a trademark. The topic here is not about whether everything inside SC2 has trademark protection of some sort, but whether something that is derived from SC2 can cause confusion with the Star Control trademark itself. This also goes for Brad's statements, stop overgeneralizing them to conflate copyright and trademark. Brad previously seem

Not if the story is associated with the trademark and has the potential to cause confusion. If a sequel to SC2's lore was created, the presumption by a lot of people would be that that sequel is a Star Control game, and that Stardock, the owners of the trademark, was somehow associated. In fact as posts in this thread have demonstrated, that actually happened for some of the people that saw the announcement for Ghosts. That's a demonstration of confusion, and is grounds for legal action. It i

What you're asking for offers no safeguards against Stardock changing its mind either. As the owner of the trademark, Stardock would have the authority to revoke any license at near will. Unless UQM wants to take the fight to court, UQM is SOL under either situation. The main difference between the two situations is that Stardock's declaration of UQM not infringing upon its trademark is compatible with trademark law. Your request to apply a copyright standard to what is a trademark matter fal

Their benign intent is already explicit in them declaring UQM does not infringe upon their trademark. I would argue that that declaration represents a far more meaningful gesture, one with actual legal standing, than the gesture that you are asking for. I do not believe UQM has any trademark rights, nor should any such inference have been made from my example. I even explicitly stated UQM is not a trademark controlled by the project. My prior remark was to note what I consider to be a

Correct, that is exactly what I am saying. That has also been what Brad and other people from Stardock have been insinuating in many of their posts on the topic. If you do not believe them and still think that consultation with an IP lawyer is warranted, it is up to you to come up with the resources to contract one to do an analysis to demonstrate otherwise. From their perspective you are asking for something that is effectively impossible. Since they consider it impossible, from their perspe

No, they emphatically do not have that discretion, because what you're proposing amounts to surrendering the sort of editorial control they would need to ensure the trademark is not made less valuable. The terms of copyright licenses in general, and CC-NC in particular, do not provide the type of safeguards necessary to keep someone from screwing up a trademark's worth. You are again conflating two separate issues, when trademark infringement occurs and the harm that infringement does. Confus

No, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that adherence to the NC-CC by UQM is not the metric by which infringement of the trademark would be judged. UQM could be completely adhering to NC-CC conditions, but still be found to have infringed upon Stardock's trademark. The creative commons license is a COPYRIGHT license, not a TRADEMARK license. Therefore its impact on whether UQM infringes upon Stardock's trademark is nil. And if UQM was infringing, any terms that UQM would be given by St

By virtue of the simple fact that UQM's adherence to the NC-CC terms are not sufficient to necessarily preclude it from causing confusion or even in a roundabout way being found to have engaged in commerce, Stardock would never use the NC-CC standard to define what constitutes as in-commerce from their perspective. The standard that they would use and are using now is the limit of what trademark law itself allows. The NC-CC license is not set up to guarantee anything about trademark u

That is most definitely not their current position. Their position is that the purpose of UQM's activities does not constitute engaging in commerce and that those activities do not cause confusion. They are not turning a blind eye to anything, Brad made a very deliberate determination here, likely taking into full consideration the fact that there have been cases where distribution of free software counted as engaging in commerce. Stardock has however determined that UQM's activities do not c

Technically the first step would be Stardock or Brad seeing any point to it. Based on what Brad has posted thus far, it can be inferred that he really doesn't. You, the person that is proposing it, would have to make the case otherwise, since Brad's position seems to basically boil down to, UQM is not engaged in commerce and will not cause confusion for Stardock's projects, therefore trademark law doesn't care about it, therefore there's nothing for Stardock to even do. As a "good faith" gest

Stardock is using the definition by trademark law. The one defined by CC-NC is irrelevant in the context of trademark law and offers little to no actual protection in the context of a trademark dispute. It is entirely possible to release a work under CC-NC terms and still be engaged in commerce. The CC-NC license is more intended as a shield against someone else misusing the released work and biting the people that released it initially than as a shield for use by the people that did the orig

You took a far too narrow reading for Brad's statement, and are ignoring the clarifications he made after it. What Brad has made very, very clear is that Stardock does not consider UQM's usage of the names and etc to be engaging in commerce. Since trademarks deal with usage in commerce specifically, UQM's activities have no relevance to the trademark dispute between Stardock and P&F. If you are trying to construct a narrative wherein you want UQM's activities to have relevance to the laws

The "significant difference" matters a lot less than you are making it out to. If Stardock wanted to assert its trademark, it doesn't matter if UQM has a copyright on every bit of art or code in the project itself. Any legal case would be judged on the merits of the trademark and its usage, the copyright, an entirely separate legal point, plays no part in that judgment. For that matter, UQM's situation vis a vis Stardock has absolutely no relation to Stardock's current lawsuit against

The public covenant would have about as much legal force as what Stardock is currently doing, since it can be withdrawn at any time at their discretion, much as they can decide to change their minds about whether UQM's usage of Star Control trademarks constitutes confusion or not. There is no mechanism by which to enforce such a covenant, as Stardock's position as the sole owner of the trademark means it has the final say on anything dealing with it. If they decide they do not want to honor t

There are plenty of other fan projects/communities out there that are in the same situation as UQM, in that they continue to live on at the sufferance of the trademark holders. Very few of them have ever gotten such a dispensation, and even fewer actively worry about the problem because there's nothing they can do if the trademark holder decides to go after them. If being subject to the sufferance of the trademark holder is such a cause of anxiety for you, you might want to reconsider how inv

Available for free was never the hard and fast test for whether something is "used in commerce" versus not. Intent behind the creation of the product, regardless of its means of distribution or cost to the ultimate consumer, plays as much a role as anything else. Frogboy's example of Star Trek fan films is a case in point. There is a cottage industry, and for the most part Paramount doesn't go after them because there's no confusion between those films and the films that Paramount itself prod