TSR TSR (2) Confirms TSR (3)'s Acquisition of Trademark (Updated!)

Jayson Elliot registered the TSR trademark back in 2011 and used it to launch Gygax Magazine along with Ernie and Luke Gygax. The two Gygax's left the company a few years later after Gary Gygax's (co-founder of TSR (1) back in the 1970s) widow, Gail Gygax, forced the closure of Gygax Magazine. Then, earlier this year, TSR (3) swooped in on the TSR trademark, after Jayson Elliot accidentally let it lapse, as TSR (2) confirms:

We have owned the TSR trademark since 2011. Last year, we missed a filing date, and another company registered it, though we are still using it in commerce. While we could win a lawsuit, we frankly don't have the money to litigate. So, we're licensing it back from them.

As a result, there are two companies now using the name TSR. You can tell when it's us because we're the only ones using the new logo.

They're opening a museum in Lake Geneva at the old TSR house, and we wish them success with it, it's important to celebrate the legacy that Gary Gygax created.

Ernie Gygax, formerly of TSR (1) under Gary Gygax, then working with Jayson Elliot as part of TSR (2), is one of the founders of of TSR (3), and confirmed in his (now infamous) interview --

The other TSR is a licensee because [Jayson Elliot] let it lapse. But he had absolutely ... love for the game and the products. There was no reason to say 'oh you've screwed up, oh it's all ours, ha ha ha ha!' Instead, Justin [LaNasa] came to him and said ... we love that you're doing Top Secret things, we have a much broader goal for the whole thing. But there's no reason for you to stop or even have any troubles. Justin said, I'll take care of the paperwork, you just give me $10 a year, and you put out all this love for old school gaming that you can. And we appreciate that you were there to try and pick up things, and you produced Gygax Magazine, for in its time that you're also working on a game that you love to play ... because Top Secret was Jayson's love, as a young man.

TSR (2), still run by Jayson Elliot, publishes Top Secret, and is not connected to TSR (3) other than now having to license it’s own name from them. TSR (3) has also registered the trademark to Star Frontiers, a game owned by and still currently sold by D&D-owner WotC.

In other news the GYGAX trademark appears to have lapsed.

UPDATE! TSR (2) has decided NOT to license its own name from TSR (3):

Update to our earlier tweet - we will NOT be licensing anything from the new company claiming rights to the TSR logos. We are not working with them in any fashion.

 

[imagineGod]

Good! The people of tomorrow should absolutely look critically at us today, and with the clarity of their greater experience recognize and acknowledge where we fell short! That’s how societies improve over generations.

It means no such thing. We improve as a society by looking back at the mistakes of the past and doing our best to avoid repeating them. I sincerely hope that continues, and that future people learn from our mistakes today as we have learned from the mistakes of yesterday.

Let us all be honest. Despite, many positives, some actions today that are considered "woke" have had severe negative results, one being the spawning of cancel culture. And that is like Gary Gygax's Dungeons abd Dragons, overall positive, marred by some not so.

That does not mean being "woke" is a bad thing, at least not today. Just like Gary Gygax was not a bad man for his day.

Yet imagine if in the not too distant future, DnD 10th Edi, after critically looking at cancel culture issues a disclaimer that all old products that were woke are wrong.

That is how disclaimers of today can age badly with time passing. Hence, do not ride the moral high horse of today. It is not eternal nor universal.

 

[imagineGod]

This is a very important distinction under United States intellectual property law that is getting glossed over in a lot of these discussions.

Copyright is granted upon the creation of a work and requires no "defending". Copyright rights are very broad. You own the copyright for the work in any medium regardless of what medium you created it in. Write a short story and nobody can go and turn it into a movie or song or whatever without your permission. Copyright's purpose is to protect artistic expression so that the creator (or current rights holder to the creation) retains control over it.

Trademark are exactly what they say - a "mark" that is used in "trade" in order to identify a particular product or brand. Trademark rights are very narrowly defined. A trademark must be actively used in commerce for a specific, declared purpose and must be actively defended. If you do not plan to use a trademark in commerce, you can't register it. If you register a trademark for selling a particular thing, you own it only for selling that particular thing. The trademark for the word "Matrix" is registered to multiple companies - to Warner Bros for the title of the film, to Toyota for the name of a car, to L'Oreal for make-up and beauty products, etc. The purpose of a trademark is to prevent consumer confusion when they make a purchase - If you see a car called "Matrix", you are not likely to assume it has anything to do with Keanu Reeves being The One or with eyeliner and blush.

A work can be protected by both copyright and by trademark. If I design a logo for my company, I own the copyright to that artwork. I can then register that logo as a trademark as well, granting me a separate set of intellectual property rights over that logo. If I don't register the trademark or allow the trademark to lapse, I still own the copyright of that image.

This distinction is what will be important in what ends up happening with this mess. Justin LaNasa and Ernie Gygax can register the trademark for "TSR", but that does not give them the copyright to TSR's work nor does it make them the same company founded in 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. They also do not have the copyright to the old logos of TSR just because they own the trademark "TSR". The copyright to those logos resides with the current rights-holder, which (unless they're some weirdness going on) would be Wizards of the Coast and/or Hasbro. This is why Wizards of the Coast can continue reprinting the old Basic, 1st, and 2nd Ed Dungeons & Dragons materials with the TSR logo as-is - they own the copyright to that logo even if they've allowed the copyright to lapse.

And if that seems complicated, this is the very basic summary of the differences between the two and it gets a LOT more complicated and confusing from there. This is why there are lawyers who specialize in intellectual property, copyright, and trademark law.

The registered trademark is the one with the (R) like Coca Cola has.

Many commonly used trademarks are just TM, which implies they may be widely known but not so registered, or did I miss-understand that (R)?

 

[MoonSong]

The registered trademark is the one with the (R) like Coca Cola has.

Many commonly used trademarks are just TM, which implies they may be widely known but not so registered, or did I miss-understand that (R)?

No, it is right I think

 

[Sacrosanct]

Let us all be honest. Despite, many positives, some actions today that are considered "woke" have had severe negative results, one being the spawning of cancel culture. And that is like Gary Gygax's Dungeons abd Dragons, overall positive, marred by some not so.

That does not mean being "woke" is a bad thing, at least not today. Just like Gary Gygax was not a bad man for his day.

Yet imagine if in the not too distant future, DnD 10th Edi, after critically looking at cancel culture issues a disclaimer that all old products that were woke are wrong.

That is how disclaimers of today can age badly with time passing. Hence, do not ride the moral high horse of today. It is not eternal nor universal.

There is no such thing as cancel culture. And if there is, it certainly wasn't spawned by modern "wokeness". You're talking on a gamer forum, where many of us lived through the satanic panic. If cancel culture was a thing, it most certainly was that more than anything is today.

 

[imagineGod]

There is no such thing as cancel culture. And if there is, it certainly wasn't spawned by modern "wokeness". You're talking on a gamer forum, where many of us lived through the satanic panic. If cancel culture was a thing, it most certainly was that more than anything is today.

Sirry to say this, but I find that denial to be tone deaf.

Just imagine telling victims of rape on campuses that there is no such thing as rape culture that pervades fraternities in American colleges.

If the victims tell you cancel culture exists, please, believe the victims. And also, please, no victim blaming.

 

[billd91]

There is no such thing as cancel culture. And if there is, it certainly wasn't spawned by modern "wokeness". You're talking on a gamer forum, where many of us lived through the satanic panic. If cancel culture was a thing, it most certainly was that more than anything is today.

What we have now is a denunciation culture - and it occurs on both sides of the "wokeness" line. It's one of the reasons social media, particularly Twitter, is such a cesspool. People will (metaphorically) climb all over each other to be more denounce-y than their peers and for narrower and narrower infractions.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Sirry to say this, but I find that denial to be tone deaf.

Just imagine telling victims of rape on campuses that there is no such thing as rape culture that pervades fraternities in American colleges.

If the victims tell you cancel culture exists, please, believe the victims.

To equate this two things is pretty awful. And as I said, unlike the 80s, where there WAS a effort to ban D&D, no one is trying to ban anyone today from buying anything they find questionable. No one is saying Gina Carano should never be able to work again, they are saying they won't watch things with her in it. No one is saying Ernie can never publish products, they are saying they won't buy anything from him. All people are doing today is refusing to support people. That's a big difference.

 

[billd91]

Sirry to say this, but I find that denial to be tone deaf.

Just imagine telling victims of rape on campuses that there is no such thing as rape culture that pervades fraternities in American colleges.

If the victims tell you cancel culture exists, please, believe the victims.

You need sufficient power to really be a "cancel" culture - but your association of cancel culture, if it exists, with wokeness is what's really tone deaf. Just ask transgender athletes who want to participate in school sports. It isn't "wokeness" behind that cancelation.

 

[Reef]

Sirry to say this, but I find that denial to be tone deaf.

Just imagine telling victims of rape on campuses that there is no such thing as rape culture that pervades fraternities in American colleges.

If the victims tell you cancel culture exists, please, believe the victims.

Are you really comparing having a product have a content advisory to being raped?

 

[darjr]

To equate this two things is pretty awful. And as I said, unlike the 80s, where there WAS a effort to ban D&D, no one is trying to ban anyone today from buying anything they find questionable. All people are doing today is refusing to support people. That's a big difference.

Yea, something like that isn’t a surprise from terrible people.