Adventures of a Bookonaut: All your Space Marines belong to us

Feb 7, 2013

All your Space Marines belong to us

View the story "All your Space Marines belong to us" on StorifyAll your Space Marines belong to usGames Workshop pick the low hanging fruit in an over reaching move to enforce a ridiculous trademark infringement.Storified by SeandBlogonaut· Wed, Feb 06 2013 17:03:15RT @mcahogarth: In the Future, All Space Marines Will Be Warhammer 40K Space Marines... Unless We Do Something. http://mcahogarth.org/?p=10593Joyce Chng (JDamask)Last night I wandered across this retweet from Urban Fantasy author Joyce Chng. Now for those of you not well versed in table top gaming Games Workshop was a small games company that started England the year I was born. Its founders included Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson of Fighting Fantasy game book fame (ie choose your own adventure with dice). The company has grown from small and humble beginnings to be listed on the London Stock Exchange see the wikipedia article for a concise historyGames Workshop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGames Workshop (often abbreviated as GW) is an English game production and retailing company. Games Workshop is best known as developer a...They are well known for producing high quality and expensive table top miniatures and for the last 20 years or so been carefully cultivating in their customer base to lead them away from the original scratch built do it yourself origins of recreational war gaming.

They provide you with everything you might need to play one of their games - from paints, to dice, to figures, to carry cases, to clothing. And woe betide anyone who tries to sneak in another companies paint in professional painting comps. If the well trained fan base doesn't stop you then they might send the boys around - the ones with ties and legal degrees.

They have saturated the market to the point where it's hard to get a tabletop game of anything else. Sure you can buy other games and figures but you'll find it hard to find competition outside of big cities. They also cottoned on to the software cycle of changing their rules versions every 3-4 years to "improve" the game and require even long time fans to buy whole new sets of rulebooks.

Now of course they have sought to make a grab at the term Space Marine, which has a long and accepted use in Science Fiction that predates their specific use of it. The seek to do this by attacking a small, self publisher who doesn't have the financial wherewithal to defend the attack. I few notables have commented:

Games Workshop trademark bullying goes thermonuclear: now they say you can't use "space marine" in science fiction http://dlvr.it/2vgcTNBoing BoingGames Workshop is still claiming to own the trademark to "Space Marine." Time to get pissed off. http://on.io9.com/f0yciGQio9Space Marines and the Battle of Tradem Ark http://bit.ly/TJy82c (via @scalzi)torforgeauthorsIf the author had lifted concepts, iconography, naming conventions from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, if it was thinly veiled fan fiction I could see the justification. A quick look at the cover and accompanying blurb doesn't seem to suggest that. They are entirely different sub genres of science fiction.Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the FiddlerDaughter of two Cuban political exiles, M.C.A. Hogarth was born a foreigner in the American melting pot and has had a fascination for the...Treacheries of the Space MarinesAfter cutting his teeth on Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly (the only comic book ever to win an Eagle Award and be canceled in the same wee...One can only hope that this story generates such outcry that Games Workshop backs off. Otherwise what's next? History academics being sued over the publication of references to Emperors, The Imperial Guard? It's bully boy tactics and Games Workshop shareholders should be ashamed of the company.

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Rabia · 631 weeks ago

I'm a big fan of Hogarth's art-as-business columns and her Three Jaguars webcomic. She's done some really nifty stuff with her writing and art, and it's frustrating seeing her picked on by Games Workshop. I hope this spreads far and wide and creates enough of a backlash that GW will back down. *crosses fingers*

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SB Wright 110p · 631 weeks ago

I think GW behaviour is disgusting and acts against the greater good. Imagine the chilling effect on creativity if corporations go around buying up terms.

My recent post All your Space Marines belong to us

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raventracks 46p · 631 weeks ago

I wouldn't worry too much. The term has been around so long, there's no way it can be patented by this lot. Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry te term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine - pity Robert Heinein is gone, but in any case, it has been around since 1932; anyone who does try to take it to court is likely to get laughed out of it!
My recent post Richard III Is Found!

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SB Wright 110p · 631 weeks ago

That is part of the issue though GW is using the fact that it has the money to employ lawyers to bully a writer into submission whether they have the right or not. It might get laughed out of court but its getting to court that's the issue.

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Feb 7, 2013

All your Space Marines belong to us

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