Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="reapersaurus" data-source="post: 1124436" data-attributes="member: 1194">Just pulled this response to the lawsuit hub-bub from MArk Tinney himself from the WW newsgroup. The statement was originally posted on the WW Developer Journal Forum, apparently.__________________________________________"There's been a tremendous amount of discussion on our boards (and many others)about the merits of our suit against Sony Pictures, Screen Gems and LakeshoreEntertainment. We're very flattered by the many words of support from wellwishers. We're also a little surprised by the knee jerk reaction some folks arehaving to this legal action that we're taking to protect what we believe to beinfringements of our copyrights. While I won't be engaging in a lengthy forumdebate, I do want to address some of the key concerns than many people haveexpressed. Please understand that while we're in pre trial, it's difficult forme to be entirely candid. Certain phrases and words must be used, or I'llcompromise our greater legal efforts. I take a mild risk by posting a letterlike this, but I want to shed a little light on the events and information thatlead us to the decision to prosecute."First of all, White Wolf is not an overly litigious company. We enter lawsuitsonly rarely, and then, only when we feel we have no other choice and alikelihood of prevailing. There have been a few instances where we've sued, anda few instances where we've been sued. Our track record is pretty good, and wegenerally don't start something we don't feel capable of finishing. In the caseof Underworld I did contact Sony in the Spring of this year and advised themthat based on the initial Underworld trailer we believed that Underworld maycontain some of our intellectual property (IP from here on out). I requested acopy of the script so we could review it in more detail and get a clearerpicture of the situation. Sony moved me around to a couple of different peopleand a few emails and voice mails later I found myself ignored. Now we had to becareful, because when a big company like Sony thinks they're going to get sued,there's a bunch of legal precautions they can take to make a lawsuitridiculously expensive for a small company like White Wolf. So rather than startshaking spears we waited patiently for the requested screenplay but it nevercame. Two months later we got the screen play from the Copyright Office andbegan reading. What we saw in that screen play was a overwhelming similarity toboth our *expression* of the World of Darkness and to Nancy Collins' short storyThe Love of Monsters."Now before those well meaning JR lawyers out there begin screaming again thatWhite Wolf doesn't own Vampires and Werewolves... we're not claiming to. No onecan copyright an idea - only the *expression* of an idea. We do feel that theWorld of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse containunique expressions of these subjects. When we read the Underworld screenplay wefound what we believed to be a nearly identical expression of our unique kindsof Vampires and a nearly identical expression of our kind of social dynamicsbetween these two opposed societies. People have pointed to Wolfman VS Dracularecently. That's fine, but it misses our point. We're claiming that we created acomplex world that supports advanced social structures of both Vampire andWerewolf societies. That each of these creature types have a unique blend ofcommon myths and new ideas and that Underworld hues too closely to these sameunique blends. Some of our elements were inspired by folklore, some by moremodern offerings and still others of these elements are wholly originalcontributions by our creative staff. It is our combination of these elementsthat is unique, and that expression is protectable, we believe, under copyrightlaw. We also found a few special game terms, like Abomination, showing up inboth our books and their screenplay, and we feel very strongly that the screenwriters were exposed to, inspired by and actively incorporating elements of ourIP into their movie. We feel our case is further strengthened by what weperceive to be overwhelming similarities between the Underworld script andNancy's short story, The Love of Monsters, which is also set in the World ofDarkness. The movie switches the genders of the characters, but otherwise wefound the sequence of events to be almost identical between her story and theirscreenplay."The merits of our case are (in our opinion) fair and reasonable, and wewouldn't be in litigation if we didn't sincerely believe that this film borrowsheavily... too heavily... from our unique expression of these popular ideas. Wehave a responsibility to ourselves, our freelance community and, yes, thisfanbase to protect our intellectual property from third parties who wouldattempt to usurp those unique qualities and represent them as independentlycreated works. Our livelihood as a publisher and rights owner depends on it. Isat in court yesterday and listened to their attorney assert that the writershad never heard of the World of Darkness, and then we showed the judge anarticle from the San Diego comicon where the creators admitted that they wereaware of White Wolf's games from their internet research. Well... which is it? Isuppose time and legal discovery will tell the truer tale."Fortunately the Judge felt that our case had enough merit that he's expeditingthe discovery process and shortening it to 30 days. This is very good for us.That will allow us to get a hearing, and hopefully an injunction before thelarger portions of Underworld's merchandising roll out, and help to protect manyof the areas we've already taken, or plan to take, the World of Darkness brandsinto.Many forums were ablaze with similarities between the trailer and ourproperties. Well, now the little guy has stepped up to defend his rights. I dothank those of you who have shown us so much support these last few days. Forthose of you who asked the tough questions, I hope this discourse sheds somehelpful light on where we're coming from and why."Thanks and be well,Mike TinneyPresidentWhite Wolf, Inc"__________________________Personally, I think this is a very impressive statement, and kudos to WW for protecting their IP from Sony's arrogant actions and deeds ("They'd never heard of WoD"?!? They're gonna have to do better than that...).</blockquote>

Verification