Bowspearer wrote:HG are going to fall flat on their face on this one. The fact is that even if you were to say that HG had the rights to every single Valkyrie mold out there, this clearly falls under the banner of inspiration rather than bootlegging.
The problem is, there's nothing clear about Copyright and IP laws. They're an exceedingly muddy area, hence the need to have everything dealt with in court to "clearly" define that instance and set precedent for similar cases.
Unfortunately, the case I mentioned earlier, Chapterhouse Studios v. Games Workshop, dealt with exactly "clearly inspired" toys/models. Whilst Games Workshop lost out on about 60-75% of their claims, various items that evoked the GW style were lost by Chapter House. For example:
This is a Games Workshop Eldar Farseer:
And this is a Chapterhouse Doomseer:
The Doomseer is clearly inspired by the Farseer(and not even as close to, in my eyes, this instance of the Skystriker with boosters to the Valkyrie with boosters) and GW won on that instance, meaning Chapterhouse can no longer produce and sell their Doomseer.
Now, to head off some people who are both TF fans and wargamers: Yes, Chapterhouse is more like GW's Fansproject/MMC/insert favorite 3rd Party producer here than what HG is to Hasbro, being that it's meant to be a stand in/replacement for the the Farseer. But the courts don't think that way, they see Company X suing Company Y and treat them equally, or at least try to.
As an aside, it's also important to remember that IP laws in general were originally created(at least in the US) to protect
people such as artists, not corporations. The reason Copyrights now last as long as they do is because somewhere along the line someone created a certain cartoon mouse and wanted to make sure his company owned said mouse as long as possible. Thanks, Walt!
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