Curse.com Sued By GW Over Warhammer Name
This may be bad news for every fan site using ads to pay server and domain name bills.
Friday Curse.com said that Games Workshop has filed a lawsuit against Curse for operating and maintaining a Warhammer Online-based fansite, WarhammerAlliance.com (WA). According to this forum post, the lawsuit cites trademark infringement, cybesquatting of the WA domain name, dilution and unfair competition.
Shelby Cardozo, the site's founder, claims that the allegations are bogus. In the forum post, Cardozo briefly goes over the WA's history, dating back to 2004 when it was a forum for Climax Entertainment's canceled version of Warhammer Online. Apparently sometime in 2005 Cardozo worked with Mythic and Games Workshop over the legal disclaimer on the website, clarifying that WA is unofficial. In 2006 Games Workshop Licensing Manager Erik Mogensen even helped promote the site through various interviews.
All seemed well for WA for the next four years.
Now according to the legal documents filed Friday, Games Workshop recently stumbled across the website. "Now, I'm not a Rocket Surgeon, but this lawsuit smells like Greenskin dung to me," Cardozo said. "In the suit they allege that they just became aware of the site. But they were promoting it in 2006, 4 years ago?" Yep, something stinks.
One forum member points out that WA is ad-supported, and Cardozo even states this in a previous post. Games Workshop may be going after parent network Curse and WA because revenue is earned from using the Warhammer name. "This is Standard Operating Procedure for GW," the forum member said. "They like to protect their intellectual properties as well as their trademarks. They have allowed other sites to stay open as long as they receive permission from GW legal AND they do not make any profit on the site."
So what defines a fan-based website? Does it mean that site owners can't use ad revenue to pay for the domain name renewal, or to pay for the need for additional servers due to increased traffic? This development will be interesting, as it may open the door for additional lawsuits against fans who just want to promote a product.
If Games Workshop does actually win its case against Curse, the result may be really bad news for fan sites using ads to pay the server and domain name bills.
Read the full complaint in a lovely PDF format here.
GW wants to kill one of the biggest fan sites of their game, responsible for who knows how much publicity and promotion of their game, which incidentally cost's them nothing for all this publicity.
Are they trying to get their own fans to hate them?
GW wants to kill one of the biggest fan sites of their game, responsible for who knows how much publicity and promotion of their game, which incidentally cost's them nothing for all this publicity.
Are they trying to get their own fans to hate them?
As mentioned in the article, how are these websites supposed to maintain themselves? They could ask for community donations, but honestly, how many people would pay to support a fan website? Hosting and registration aren't free (sites this big can't use Geocities, if it was even still around). Companies like GW should be supporting these websites (they wouldn't need ads if GW picked up the tab). That, of course, might not make the community so open, being sponsored by the company, but at least it would show support for the community, rather than spitting in their face.
That brings me completely off topic. "Web 2.0" has completely killed free hosts. Why bother to signup for geocities or tripod (and have to learn the super-complex language that is HTML), when you can sign up for facebook or myspace or blogger? Bah, what is the internet coming to these days?
The problem is that, even when you're right and a suit brought against you is complete bullshit, you still have to spend money to defend yourself. Most times, it's cheaper to offer a settlement for less than the cost of the defense. All parasites... er, I mean lawyers, know this fact well; for most, it is their bread and butter. I have no doubt that is what's going on here.
It was my 1st MMO. Some fun was had, but far more frustrations. I'll never play a MMO again. MMOS take too danged long. I'll never play one again.
Nah. Smooth talking lawyers talking to suits that don't own anything more than a flashy new macbook and a blackberry and convincing them this is the right way to go was what got the ball rolling. They get paid a ton no matter what the outcome is.
So what IF its not a Warhammer official site? The owners bought the name fair and square. They don't pretend to be an official site - which would be a BIG NO NO.
This mean ANY FAN site or any site related to a business would be up for a lawsuit.
Such sites as :
apple2history.com
Applevacations.com
anything with "apple" could be sued by apple.
or microsoftsucks.com could be claimed to be owned by MS.
or ilovecamero.com or corvettelovers.com or hummersucks.com or ilovehummers.com (note - some of these are/could be cyber squatters) could be sued by GM even if sites are by fans of their products or have nothing to do with GM. The ilovehummer is for humming birds.
thinkpadtoday ... oops, not owned by ThinkPad, but they do reviews and have ecoupons for thinkpad, guess that would mean lenovo can come in and take over that site.
Perhaps someone who owns the "war.com" site can sue GW because "War" is in the name? or hammertime.com can sue GW because of the use of "hammer".
I went to the curse.com site, its a pro-looking site promoting various games and discussion rooms. No reason to frack with them. What should they do, rename their site: www.a_general_rpg_rts_gaming_site_with_noname.com?
Corporations are are getting dumber. They sure as hell don't need rights to pay for political campaigns with unlimited budgets. Thank you supreme court!
the sub is for addons... and addon services not nething else
Yeah, luckily the charged me 6x in one month otherwise I would've forgotten to stop paying for my acct that I haven't touched in 6 months.