TSR The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR

Sacrosanct · Sep 20, 2022

Also, I'll add that you don't have to keep refining or putting out new content to protect IP. So what if the same material from 30 years ago is still being sold. It's the "still being sold" part that matters. If I write a book, I don't suddenly lose my ownership of the rights to it after a couple years if I don't re-write it. Especially if I'm still selling it. That would be silly.

Umbran · Sep 20, 2022

WarDriveWorley said:
Soooo.. they're not sure they're going to take any action, BUT will block/ban? That sounds suspiciously like action.

The wording isn't great, but, I think it means that they aren't going to block/ban folks who have done things in the past, in other venues, or for reasons of association. But, if you publicly support it in that space from this time on, you're toast.

By that, Ernie is okay, so long as he keeps his mouth shut going forward.

the Jester · Sep 20, 2022

BoxCrayonTales said:
Racism and deceptive marketing aside, NuTSR is well within their rights to snatch up trademarks that WotC let lapse.

Yeah, but they didn't let them lapse.

BoxCrayonTales said:
The Star Frontiers and TSR trademarks have long since expired because WotC let them languish. WotC doesn't have any right to claim them now, and putting up low quality scans on Drivethrurpg after telling the fansite to take down their remastered PDFs is a jerk move that shouldn't count toward maintaining the trademark anyway.

As I understand it, the fan site had a deal with WotC.

BoxCrayonTales said:
Hosting PDFs shouldn't count toward maintaining a trademark, otherwise you could maintain a trademark forever simply because an ebook you released two hundred years ago is still being sold even though you did nothing with the IP since.

They do count, though, and trademarks don't expire. It doesn't matter whether you like how a law works; that's how it works. I dislike plenty of laws. The thing to do is try to get them changed, not pretend that it works differently.

BoxCrayonTales said:
It's a really frustrating situation because both sides are in the wrong here.

They really aren't. One side is full of bigots who are trying to claim a bunch of IP that isn't theirs. The other side is saying, "Hey, that's not yours, and in fact it's ours, and in fact, you are making us look like a bunch of asshats by using our material to push bigoted material out. Knock that off."

BoxCrayonTales said:
WotC doesn't have any right to the trademark anymore and shouldn't be allowed to try re-registering until NuTSR's claim lapses, because they clearly didn't care about the IP before and still don't unless they get bad publicity over it.

Your opinion doesn't carry any legal weight here. Whether you like it or not, WotC has continually sold Star Frontiers and a bunch of other stuff bearing the marks in question on DriveThruRPG for, well, basically forever.

BoxCrayonTales said:
One of the most telling acts here is that Sasquatch LLC already snatched the Alternity trademark and published their own retroclone a few years ago (it got cancelled and Sasquatch is now MIA, but whatever). This angered many Alternity fans who thought the IP was coming back only to learn it wasn't. What did WotC do then? Absolutely nothing. They still haven't restored the Alternity PDFs they removed back in 2008 during their infamous hissy fit over piracy.

So what? That has nothing to do with this case. Perhaps Sasquatch didn't rise to the level where WotC noticed them. Perhaps they didn't care enough as long as Sasquatch wasn't making them look like a bunch of bigots. Perhaps Sasquatch went away because WotC sent them a C&D. I don't know, and it's not relevant to the case at hand.

BoxCrayonTales said:
Also, copyright law should be reformed. There are so many orphaned works being lost to posterity because it is illegal for anyone but the copyright owner to maintain them. This fate has befallen many of my favorite obscure RPG supplements like Grim Tales/Slavelords of Cydonia, Alternity, the paperback Hogshead edition of Puppetland, Aether & Flux, Starship Troopers RPG, and many more. If corpos don't care to preserve nor profit off their IPs, then they shouldn't be allowed to prevent others from doing so. That's a grotesque miscarriage of the original purpose of copyright: allow a creator to profit for a time off his labors, then let anyone else preserve and remix the work.

Oh, I agree with you here- but that doesn't make it so. Copyright law is a whole separate discussion that isn't really germane to what is actually going on here.

BoxCrayonTales said:
Anyway, if the judge rules in favor of WotC, then that would set a dangerous precedent for trademark by effectively allowing anyone to maintain a trademark forever.

You already can. Trademarks don't expire. I'm not sure how this is a "dangerous precedent" or who it's dangerous to, though.

BoxCrayonTales said:
They do this just by registering it, posting an ebook on Kindle Unlimited, and then forgetting about it for centuries. This would prevent anyone else from ever registering that trademark ever again, even if the person who registered it has been dead for centuries or the company went out of business centuries ago. This would create the novel problem of "orphaned trademarks," which is similar to the current problem under copyright law where there are countless "orphaned works" whose copyright is either untraceable or held by owners who are deceased, out of business, apathetic, or don't even know they own it. This would be a bad thing for commerce and pervert the original intent of trademark law.

The purpose of trademark law is to prevent someone from selling something similar to the trademarked product under the name you use and confusing the public. I'm not sure why you think this is bad. If Pepsi goes out of business, why should someone in the future be able to swoop up their logo and use it? Make your own brand. But maybe I'm missing something here.

BoxCrayonTales said:
Like, WotC is currently selling scans of the Amazing Engine RPG from the early 1990s. They haven't produced any books for it since the original printings and are almost certainly only selling the scans to reduce piracy. Do you think their behavior constitutes good faith maintaining of the Amazing Engine trademark, such that nobody else should ever be allowed to register it for as long as the PDFs are sold on Drivethru?

Yes. When the copyright expires, someone else can go ahead and strip out the trademarks and then sell their own version of the actual material. I feel like you may be confusing the differences between trademarks and copyright, but who knows? I'm not an expert on these things either.

Deset Gled · Sep 20, 2022

BoxCrayonTales said:
Anyway, if the judge rules in favor of WotC, then that would set a dangerous precedent for trademark by effectively allowing anyone to maintain a trademark forever. They do this just by registering it, posting an ebook on Kindle Unlimited, and then forgetting about it for centuries. This would prevent anyone else from ever registering that trademark ever again, even if the person who registered it has been dead for centuries or the company went out of business centuries ago. This would create the novel problem of "orphaned trademarks," which is similar to the current problem under copyright law where there are countless "orphaned works" whose copyright is either untraceable or held by owners who are deceased, out of business, apathetic, or don't even know they own it. This would be a bad thing for commerce and pervert the original intent of trademark law.

I want to double up on what @LordEntrails said, that there's just so much wrong in your post I don't think I can address all of it. But I'll start here.

First, and most importantly, there are multiple times in your post when you conflate trademark and copyright laws, and this paragraph is a big case of it. Second, you have to actively maintain a trademark, which is what WotC/Hasbro has done by continuing to sell the product. Third, because of the previous point, the idea of "orphaned" IP is a generally a copyright issue, not a trademark one. Finally, the original intent of trademark law is to protect consumers by not allowing a third party to trick customers into buying a product with a fake name. Which is exactly what NuTSR did when they claimed to be the "original" TSR and that their version of Star Frontiers was a "reboot".

This case is not going to set a precedent; what you describe above is exactly how trademark law works and has always worked. This is the reason Edgar Rice Burrows trademarked "Tarzan" in 1912. It's why you can write a story about Tarzan or reprint public domain works, but can't make a comic called "Tarzan" without permission.

WarDriveWorley · Sep 20, 2022

BoxCrayonTales said:
since ebook stores are essentially privatized libraries.

There's a lot to unpack here. That said I reallllyyyy want to chime in on this. Ebook STORES (emphasis mine) are not libraries except that they both have collections of books. If that's the only criteria for something to be a library then you could claim Wal-Mart is a library.

Ancalagon · Sep 20, 2022

BoxCrayonTales said:
Racism and deceptive marketing aside,

(Others have given you good responses on the substance of your text, so I will focus on your opening)

First, you forgot the sexism and transphobia.

Second, no, we will not set those aside. They are very germane. They are what drove WotC to act with such a heavy hand. They are not "lesser concerns". They matter. A lot. They are what is driving us to keep an eye on this case, and why so many of us oppose NuTSR's efforts.

VelvetViolet · Sep 20, 2022

Deset Gled said:
I want to double up on what @LordEntrails said, that there's just so much wrong in your post I don't think I can address all of it. But I'll start here.

First, and most importantly, there are multiple times in your post when you conflate trademark and copyright laws, and this paragraph is a big case of it. Second, you have to actively maintain a trademark, which is what WotC/Hasbro has done by continuing to sell the product. Third, because of the previous point, the idea of "orphaned" IP is a generally a copyright issue, not a trademark one. Finally, the original intent of trademark law is to protect consumers by not allowing a third party to trick customers into buying a product with a fake name. Which is exactly what NuTSR did when they claimed to be the "original" TSR and that their version of Star Frontiers was a "reboot".

This case is not going to set a precedent; what you describe above is exactly how trademark law works and has always worked. This is the reason Edgar Rice Burrows trademarked "Tarzan" in 1912. It's why you can write a story about Tarzan or reprint public domain works, but can't make a comic called "Tarzan" without permission.

I know the difference. Copyright lasts for a fixed period after the creation/publication of a work and/or the death of the author. Trademark has to be actively used or it will lapse. They no longer work as intended because of Disney lobbying the government to extend copyright terms to the point where they're actively detrimental to preservation efforts.

TSR stopped selling Star Frontiers in 1985. WotC only started selling PDFs in 2017. That's a large enough gap for the trademark to lapse, because trademarks have to be actively used or they will lapse. If WotC didn't register the trademark before NuTSR did, then they don't have a claim to the trademark anymore.

Using PDF sales of old books to maintain trademark (not copyright) when you're not actually making any new products with it feels like it's exploiting a loophole. Trademark law was created before the advent of electronic storage, so it doesn't take into account situations where someone might try to game the system by trying to maintain a trademark without actually doing any effort by simply selling a book on kindle unlimited and then forget it exists.

The Burroughs Estate is doing more than just keeping Tarzan in print. They're actively engaged in making new works too. If keeping a book in print was enough to maintain a trademark, then the Stoker Estate would still have the trademark to Dracula.

What nuTSR is doing is clearly wrong, I don't dispute that, but that doesn't let WotC off the hook.

the Jester said:
If Pepsi goes out of business, why should someone in the future be able to swoop up their logo and use it? Make your own brand. But maybe I'm missing something here.

Trademark is not supposed to last specifically forever, it's supposed to last however long it's being used. I feel like most of the posters here don't actually understand trademark or copyright law or the difference between them. I'm not a lawyer or a judge, but I can read the government websites explaining how these laws work.

I get that nuTSR are bigots, but that doesn't let WotC off the hook. WotC let the trademark lapse. Now they're trying to retroactively argue that they didn't because they're selling (low quality) PDFs now.

If WotC wins, then they're setting a precedent that you can retroactively reclaim a trademark that you let lapse without actually registering it.

Ancalagon · Sep 20, 2022

darjr said:
No good deed goes unpunished.

View attachment 261866
View attachment 261867

I'm not really following here. Who is YoDanno, how do we know he was sent an abusive email etc etc?

CleverNickName · Sep 20, 2022

Ancalagon said:
Second, no, we will not set those aside. They are very germane. They are what drove WotC to act with such a heavy hand. They are not "lesser concerns". They matter. A lot. They are what is driving us to keep an eye on this case, and why so many of us oppose NuTSR's efforts.

I'll go even further. These are the very reasons that I want to see NuTSR removed from the hobby. Bigots are categorically unwelcome.

Umbran · Sep 20, 2022

BoxCrayonTales said:
Racism and deceptive marketing aside..

Given the damage done to the reputation of the trademark by that racism and deceptive marketing, it is actually an important part of the case.

BoxCrayonTales said:
I get that nuTSR are bigots, but that doesn't let WotC off the hook. WotC let the trademark lapse.

No, they didn't. They allowed the registration of the trademark to lapse. But, while the registration makes defense of the mark easier, registration is explicitly not required to maintain the trademark. Simply continuing to sell products with the mark is sufficient.

TSR The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR

Sacrosanct

Legend

Umbran

Mod Squad

the Jester

Legend

Deset Gled

.

WarDriveWorley

Hero

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon

VelvetViolet

Adventurer

Ancalagon

Dusty Dragon

CleverNickName

Limit Break Dancing

Umbran

Mod Squad

Similar Threads

Related Articles