That pertains to the cause/effect of a DMCA process and has no bearing on the legal action itself.

Also...anyone can put a '(c)' on a product box without actually OWNING the '(c)'.  I strongly expect that printing process/result was just 'one of those things' that no-one cared to correct formally.

If anyone needs to 'wake up' I'd [still] suggest that people wait till post-court-case.  Second-guessing such is a waste of effort and utterly meaningless in the Real World [tm] ...;)

Are you actually listening to the rabble rousing that you are doing here? It's so hyperbolic.

Looking at it from a neutral standpoint, lets assume P&F win. Do they gain anything from the DMCA? No. They do not.

Lets consider what happens if the DMCA was taken to court and P&F won, it would give large companies like EA the ability to take down any game they liked and cripple a company behind a wall of money that a small company would have no hope fighting.

There is a lot of bad here that P&F tried to do that did not need to be done. People did not need to loose jobs from dev costs being cut to make up for the loss of sales. But the less core people will have lost jobs due to these unnecessary actions.

The first company to overreach and go beyond just threatening and court cases was certainly P&F which puts them ethically in the wrong from where I stand.

Large game publishers like Accolade in 1992 would certainly not allow anyone to slap a (c) copyright on a game that they published. Accolade had to approve the discs, box art, etc. The game discs and boxes were not printed in Fred's garage.

The e-mail thread with Atari is further evidence of Fred and Paul's ownership, in addition to the source code and everything else.

And in any case, calling them "contractors on the classic DOS game" is disingenuous, misleading and an attempt to justify an unfair attack on them.

Someone is ignoring our replies to post more of their own rhetoric. Please take part in a conversation rather than spam the same points, and yes, it is spam if you have nothing new to say.

You're wasting your time. This forum is mostly full of people who are Stardock fans first and foremost. They have already decided that Stardock can do no wrong.

Personally, I was looking forward to Origins and whatever P&F would come up with, but Stardock's actions have poisoned the waters so I have yet to (and may never) buy Origins.

It's a pity, I was pretty neutral when the dispute started, not being a fan of Star Control from back in the day buy rather from playing UQM a couple of years ago. 

Uhhh, they directly addressed jafo's point about the copyright on the box. Your post sounds like you consider anything other than agreement to be ignoring people.

They had already said this, it's the same point as their previous post. How does it further anything?

ozdon81, why does it matter if P&F have the copyright to SC2?  Copyright protects source code and art.  SCO has it's OWN source code and art.  Trademark protects names, like McDonalds (company) or Big Mac (burger).  Stardock owns the Star Control trademark because Atari made that cheap flash game called Star Control to extend the trademark, then Stardock bought the trademark.

SCO did not copy source code or art from SC2.  The ONLY grey area art-wise is hyperspace is similar.  You could either believe P&F's chart or Stardock's point-by-point rebuttal chart.  But if you want to ignore the spin and decide for yourself then you need to ignore the charts and look at the screenshots and see if you get confused which is from SC2 and which is from SCO.  If you don't get confused then the "look and feel" is not similar enough.

As to the aliens, Stardock can call the Precursors Precursors because P&F do not have the trademark to "Precursor" and it's too late for them to try to claim it now.  Stardock have used "Precursor" in GalCiv for years, not to mention other franchises using "Precursor" before and after P&F.

The only other infringement grey area is whether SCO is part of the multiverse with SC2, which might make the Precursors and the Observers in SCO the same as in SC2, which might infringe on the copyright.  I guess Stardock wishes that is the case, but they were smart to not actually say that in game and to make the Observers NOT look the same as the Arilou.

Prof_Hari_Seldon, I would prefer it if F&P hadn't found SCO infringing. That way both SCO and GotP could coexist (since I don't believe Stardock has a ghost of a chance of succeeding in convincing the court that F&P don't own the copyright to UQM).

However, these "grey areas", as you put it, are exactly the problem. And while SCO's hyperspace expression definitely counts as a "grey area", the multiverse claim does not. If SCO takes place in the same multiverse as UQM (let alone shares characters with it), it is a derivative work of UQM (since being in one universe/multiverse or another is a question of story, and story is definitely covered by copyright). Derivative works can only be made by those who own the copyright to the original work or a license to it. Since Stardock has neither, Stardock claiming that SCO takes place in the same multiverse as UQM would be copyright infringement.

IANAL, of course, but that's what the facts point to as far as I can see.

Well that's pretty simple, Stardock can continue not saying in game that SC2 is part of the SCO multiverse.

And that would be for the best.

It's the same subject, but they elaborated on it to defend their position. Seems like a genuine attempt at discussion to me.

Quoting Sir_On_The_Edge, reply 43

@Kazriko - a build that Linux native is in the works, if you but the PC version now you'll get both when it's out as that's how steam works

Yeah, I know that works. I usually wait to purchase something until it has a Linux version so that they get money specifically for making the linux version, but in this case I went ahead and bought it ahead of time anyway. 

That's not how copyright works.

If it's an association issue, it's trademark.  Stardock owns the trademark free and clear.  The Star Control games exist within the Star Control multiverse because we say what is and isn't in the Star Control multiverse.  If we were to say that the Star Wars universe is in Star Control universe, that would be an issue because of the trademark (consumer confusion) not because of copyright.

If you can't put A and B next to each other and get a person to agree (or disagree) that one is a copy (substantially similar) of the other then it's not a copyright question.

Most of the mistaken arguments I've seen on this dispute is the association fallacy.  Trademark controls association. Not copyright.

As I understand it (though of course I may still be wrong here), consumer confusion is all about real-world associations - for example, a product that is marketed under the Star Control trademark is associated with the current owner of the mark (Stardock). You are correct in that you can slap the Star Control trademark on various products that you own and declare them part of the Star Control multiverse.

I'm not talking about real-world associations, though. I'm talking about fictional associations in a fictional universe. SCO makes references to other universes existing in addition to the Origins universe that the game is set in. Therefore we can assume that from the point of view of, say, the Captain, the Precursors, the Observers, etc. there are other universes out there, that there is, as F&P put it, a "hyper-dimensional" connection between the UQM universe and the SCO universe. That's a story issue.

So if you say that the UQM universe (which is owned by F&P) is part of the Star Control multiverse, then to an observer from the UQM universe the SCO universe also exists as a real entity. Basically, F&P must edit their story against their will because someone other than them owns the Star Control trademark? Don't copyright owners hold exclusive rights to their stories?

I realize that I've already had a similar discussion with you over half a year ago on the UQM forum, and I realize it's up to the court to decide who is right... So I'll understand if you don't want to continue this discussion.

Copyright does not grant P&F ownership over the "UQM" universe. It grants them control over distribution of the expression of the story that exists in SC1 and 2, and it also grants them a certain degree of control for "derivations" of the material in those two games. Ownership of the "universe" however requires the ability to control usage of things like names, which copyright does not grant. Trademark does, which means P&F do not have legal standing to even expand the UQM story if they wanted to without the consent of the Star Control trademark holder, which in this case is Stardock.

The USPTO interprets copyright of videogames to only be for source code and audiovisual material, not design ideas/concepts.  They left lore out for some reason.  The USPTO also did not bring up SCO possibly being a "derivative work" of SC2 for some reason.

I believe that lore is covered by "script/screenplay", which is present in F&P's second copyright registration for SC2, which covers just that and audiovisual material. The source code was covered by their earlier copyright registration.

zwabbit's post just now might have the answer.

I still don't know how to decide if something is a "derivative work" or not, though.

So many internet lawyers...

I'll refer to the fairly straight forward example I gave earlier.

If you can't put A and B next to each other and compare, then it's not a copyright discussion.