Games Workshop believes they own the rights to the word Space Marines

Link http://mcahogarth.org/?p=10593

Relevant points of the blog entry highlighted below.

Quote :

In mid-December, Games Workshop told Amazon that I’d infringed on the trademark they’ve claimed for the term “space marine” by titling my original fiction novel Spots the Space Marine. In response, Amazon blocked the e-book from sale [original post and update]. Since then, I’ve been in discussion with Games Workshop, and following their responses, with several lawyers.

To engage a lawyer to defend me from this spurious claim would cost more money than I have, certainly more than the book has ever earned me. Rather than earning money for my family, I’d be taking money from them, when previously my writing income paid for my daughter’s schooling. And I’d have to use the little time I have to write novels to fight a protracted legal battle instead.

In their last email to me, Games Workshop stated that they believe that their recent entrée into the e-book market gives them the common law trademark for the term “space marine” in all formats. If they choose to proceed on that belief, science fiction will lose a term that’s been a part of its canon since its inception. Space marines were around long before Games Workshop. But if GW has their way, in the future, no one will be able to use the term “space marine” without it referring to the space marines of the Warhammer 40K universe.

Man sometimes I really hate buying 40K stuff when it encourages shenanigans like what happened to this writer.

as much as i support GW, but taking the word Space Marine for themself i think is abit to much. Space marine is a common word... warhammer 40k space marine maybe.

Its the usual Corporate bullshit of trying to monopolize the market.

I mean it's one thing to protect your IP, by all means go after those companies that blatantly copy your models 100% but don't penalise other creative talents in the process.

What a load of crap! Space Marines and power armor have been around LONG before GW. Read "Starship Troopers"- a book written in 1959!

deathkorps wrote:

What a load of crap! Space Marines and power armor have been around LONG before GW. Read "Starship Troopers"- a book written in 1959!

Careful Jeff the word Space Marine itself was never used in "Starship Troopers". Fortunately Heinlein did use the word space marines in the book Space Cadets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet

But there are even earlier works like the 1936 short story by Bob Olson "The Space Marines and the Slavers"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Olsen

GW.. tak tau nak cakap apa hahaha.. Sad thing.

But it would be difficult to win this.. all they need to show is that the word had been use before GW did.. which i think is plentiful i guess. But let leave it to the lawyer to resolve this problem.

And thus, the political war of ownership begins. "In the grim darkness of the future, there is only... WAR"

I think other sites have stated this but it doesn't matter if the words have long been used by someone in the past.

So long as you are the first person to register 'space marine' as a trademark, it's legally owned by you.

I don't know the facts so I can't say for certain who's legally right. But GW doesn't seem to have a legitimate aim to threaten this author of trademark infringement. I understand ChapterHouse but it's definite the book will never cause confusion as to believing it's a product from GW as to affect their reputation.

Conversely, by doing this, it just shows where GW puts their money into, instead of improving the game.

I think GW may / may not owns the rights to "Space Marine" within the e-book medium, and didn't want to set a precedent by letting a book with that title slide.

They didn't and couldn't request Amazon to take down the print version of Spots the Space Marine though.

There may be some confusion as to the difference between Trademarks and Copyrights...?

Simply, there's differences in what type of IP laws we deal with in concern with what can be registered and how it can be enforced.

There's trademarks, copyrights and patents.

We're dealing with trademarks in this case, essentially it protects names of products from being sold by another person, ie. you can't sell shoes named Nike or Puma if you don't have the trademark for it or have permission from the person owning the trademark. It's easy to register but difficult to enforce because the scope of it can be narrow due to the type of product or geographical factors.

Copyright is something you've actually created, like music, art or design and you want to avoid people claiming it as their own and profit from it. Patents, are less heard but they protect much more 'intangible' stuffs like ideas.

More details on what I heard- AznJake may be able to elaborate:

GW only own the trademark for "Space Marine" as it pertains to grimdark, with their particular setting, and only as far as it goes for selling miniatures, wargames, computer games.

They don't own the rights to the words "space marine" in fiction.

The issue may just be that the words "Space Marine" appear on the title of that ebook.

To be fair to GW, they had to pursue action because they don't want future (actual) rip-offs to bring this up as "Why did you let Spots the Space Marine go unchallenged? I should be free to market WarAxe: Space Marine 20K"

eBooks have their own set of rules that are different from printed books, hence GW's claim there is a bit woozy.