EVE General Discussion

Only if they pronounce it "Spess Mahreenz" like THQ did.

it's a trademark, and this is how trademarks are defended



oh is it now

e: imma not be insulting, i apologise

They don't have a trademark for the term 'Space Marine'. That's the problem.

The article at escapist magazine covers it in quite good detail.

Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that one.

As an ex-GW employee I can state with a degree of certainty they will pursue this simply because they have the money, they have defended their niche at every turn, all that needs to happen is for CCP to find a reference to Space marines that predates GW's use. I would personally suggest CCP use the term space mariner, in the true nautical sense, and refer to 'space marines' as a colloquial affectation, btw astro jar heads is still copyright free. GW is litigation happy and as much as you/we don't like it there are ways to work around it. When I worked for them the very mention of a computer version of their games was anathema and discussing it with a customer was grounds for dismissal. From memory (which is old and addled) there is a reference to space marines in the Alien films, which was never pursued by GW.
TL;DR GW is throwing their weight around, another kind of smurf isn't going to affect their income....

Space - Cannot trademarked

Marine - Cannot be trademarked

Space Marine cannot be trademarked. Not because it is two different words, or even because it is a phrase using two different words, but because it is a generic phrase. I couldn't care less if Games Workshop wants to trademark it; I very much doubt anyone is going to let them do that.

Maybe they will, but then that will mean they are incredibly lacking in foresight. Intel shouldn't even have copyright over x86 architecture imo, let alone 64 which was developed by AMD. The only reason they have both is because some short-sighted individual gave them patent rights over x86 without realizing that it was quite possibly the only way to do it effectively, and those patent rights gave them control over all products and architectures designed off of that architecture.

The fact is, x86-64 is dominant in the world market simply because it controls the software development required to create OS and applications for use on them, and companies like Microsoft produce one of the leading OS on the world market. Even Apple had to move to x86-64 architecture simply because they couldn't get any more out of the PowerPC processor with different architecture.

Some things have a very limited design architecture in order to work. CPUs are one of them. Microsoft, Linux, and MAC all function now on that architecture and limit the ability to develop a new architecture. Tablets and the like open some doors in that they use a variety of much less capable architectures that may move beyond x86-64 at some point, but currently have limited market.

The point of all that, is to provide a precedent for patent laws that conflict with technological advancement and restrict progress while creating monopolies for the holders. Space Marines is similar, though it impacts the world in a very different way.

By limiting the use of such a phrase through trademarking, you are preventing a generic term from being used descriptively in other places. Limiting creativity, as mentioned in the last part of that article.

Starship Troopers
Dust 514 - Less affected than you might think, but nevertheless it applies.
Any other content that has marines in space, or soldiers in space. Marine because space typically involves ships, which implies a navy, and thus any soldiers serving on them, or with them, must then be marines, and they are in space. Hence, Space Marines.

You can't rightfully copyright, trademark, or register as your own or belonging to a limited company a descriptive term, even if it is capitalized. Anyone who granted this would be a fool.

Don't forget outboard motors; they use it too.

they, uh, already have a registered trademark, i think

they're pursuing an unregistered trademark (ie in digital books) now from what i can tell?

and i don't think they're going after the concept of space marines (marines in space), that's undefendable, just the phrasing

i agree with those who say companies like amazon and apple and google are too quick to comply with takedown requests and all that, it's not fair that just a polite email to some office can have someone's work ruined :(

They are acting like typical 'Interlectual Property Trolls', pushing around little guys.

However the EFF just got in their face.