If you would bother to read the letter they sent him in full it clearly states that they will aggressively fight etc etc
He has used the marks on boxes and 'promotional' material and then made it all public etc etc. Regardless of if this falls under fair use or not, Epic MUST send this letter and aggressively enforce their copyright and trademarks. This is because, if he was to go on and produce another one for someone else, then another for someone, then another which he gets a bit of money for, then thousands of people want them etc etc Epic would not have a leg to stand on as they did not aggressively enforce their right to the properties at the very start.
I quote "Trademarks must be aggressively protected by the owner to keep them from falling into the public domain and the owner losing the protection of the mark. This means that if the owner fails to protect its mark and allows it to be used in unauthorized ways or in ways that may cause it to cease being identified in the mind of the public solely with the goods and services of the owner, the protection may be lost. This is because the trademark is based upon identification of the mark with a particular source and if the owner of the mark shows an indication that it does not care much about protecting that source identification, the mark may lose its value to that owner and the court may strip that owner of the protection the mark originally afforded."
"In sum, owners of trademarks are not necessarily "evil" if they rigorously enforce their intellectual property. They must do so if they are to protect their commercial asset. And while, if you are not the owner of such a mark may object to what you deem to be "restrictive" policies, keep in mind that you too benefit from the protection afforded by trademark law. If you want a particular brand of a product or service, you want to be assured that what you are buying is what you are getting. If the owner of that mark does not protect the mark, at some point you too may be a victim of the confusion that may result."
More here:
http://www.ivanhoffm.../trademark.htmlAs I said, no news, just copyright and trademark law at work. He is more than ok to make Dolls that look like Marcus etc but he is NOT allowed to use the copyrighted logos etc as the letter clearly states. Additionally, if you read the terms of the promotion pack that epic sent out for people to help promote gears I am sure there are some terms and conditions associated with the use of the contained materials.
IMHO this is just a very bad bit of press coverage that has no more truth or balanced views than an article in the Sun as otherwise it would clearly explain 'WHY' Epic sent the letter (the reasons I quote above) but it clearly does not say any such thing. Shame on xbox scene for rallying behind this useless story.
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Topic: Epic Threatens over Custom Gears of War Figure (Read 2006 times)