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This LEGAL Battle Will DETERMINE The Future of 3d Printing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ส.ค. 2022
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The term 'Space Marine' has already been found to be generic in the trademark suits GW had with Blizzard over Warcraft/Starcraft.
Therefore people who make STLs could reasonably include "Space marine" as part of their tags and description and GW would have no leg to stand on.
Good for Cults3D. Itwould have been really naive to think the list of 200 miniatures would end there. If they had given in, GW would simply keep coming back with more and more demands.
I as a 40k fan would have never taught I was ever say, I support the cultists and see what they are fighting for
This goofy azz clown just MOANS
@@wavavoom good, always support you local minor cultist that is in no way a source of intelligence
Yeah, so naive it would have been. It's better for this tiny little nothing of a company to go to war in court with a major company like GW who can afford a literal army of lawyers, are guaranteed to win, then will sue for court fees to the extent that this tiny little company will likely have to file bankruptcy. All so people can blatantly steal IP.
GW: “3d printing is a threat to our business. We need to stop people from going to 3d printing.”
Also GW: insanely raises prices over and over driving people to 3d printing.
A lot of what Games Workshop has been doing over the last few decades don't really make sense. At least, not until you realize that the management has absolutely no idea what their customers want (this is, after all, the company that refused to do customer surveys), and that everything they do is done to earn fast money. They have no interest in the long term sustainability of the company.
Also GW: Get caught using 3D printed models to present their upcoming new releases to their customers, or to make their dioramas
@@chaoscarl8414 If I was GW, I would cut the price of all of my models by 50% and part of my marketing campaign should be showing how difficult and how much work 3D printing can be. Ruined spools of material. "Free" STL files that don't work. Along with detail that my models have. Then be like, "you don't want to deal with that mess, here are 10 space marines with all of the extra weapons and bits to make whatever you want for $29." That's right, less than $3 a space marine!
Yea they could start by having a fething sale every once in a while...
If GW was smart, they would just make OFFICIAL Warhammer 3D STL files to sell to people. or provide a subscription. you know join the market. if the quality is good then people will buy them because of the official tag alone.
You know what's crazy is that if you just treat your fandom with love and like human beings instead of livestock they wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Yes there would be some 3d printing in the community but not to this extreme because they forced people's hand with ridiculous pricing and rightful backlash for going after the community in a malicious way for creating fan made TH-cam videos. They brought this on themselves and I have no pitty for them with how they've been going after people these past few years.
You mean there would be a lot of 3D printing because they would sell STL´s themselves?
I kinda have rose tinted glasses for the old white and red stores (mid 90’s) when I was a kid where it seemed more community focused though my 12 year old self only got to visit a store a couple of times as they weren’t everywhere and the nearest one was Bristol a good 50 minute drive by car. I’ve disliked going into a GW store for almost 2 decades as the stores felt less about the hobby and more like I’m a cash piñata to be hit for cash to come out. I’m lucky that hard sell tactics just make me not want to buy anything.
@@Silith13 More people in this hobby for the most part are willing to pay reasonable prices for well made plastic models. They are generally far more solid than what you can print in resin, but supporting games workshop feels like their goal is to squeeze as much out of you for as little product as possible.
There's no reason to play the game anyway, 40K is just not a good game, it's not fun, it's not balanced at all. The only reason to play it is that it has the biggest community and for some people a lot of how they socialize is wrapped up in it. Ironically Games Workshop understands this (that is has a captive audience who it can treat however it wants) but GW customers DO NOT understand this. That's why GW Customers put up with the crazy pricing, constant codex / Rulebook churn, bad game design etc.
GW Customers have TAUGHT GW that that they can be abused and will come back begging for more.
@@mudawott That's pretty much capitalism in a nutshell: Maximise profits by minimising costs.
GW wouldn't want to take this to court. The risk is too high even if the chances of winning were 75% in their favor. A loss would mean that their attempts to bully other creators would become much more costly and difficult.
Never underestimate stupidity when fueled by greed, but maybe.
Lawsuits are often a game of chicken, and the side with the deepest pockets can normally back the other side down.
75% chance of GW winning means a 75% chance that Cults3D has to pay GW's legal expenses, and with those odds, it becomes a lot easier to "convince" them to comply.
Considering how much warhammer is based on plagiarism, it's nowhere near 75% on their side.
@@tomasxfranco Well, no.
The stuff that GW has "borrowed" from other sources has been made legally distinct enough to not contitute copyright infringement, in the same way that GW can't do anything about the "space knights" or "greater good mechsuits" for sale on various sites, that don't overtly resemble GW models.
@@arfived4 Well. yes. The most stuff in cults is as much and more distinct from GW-stuff. WW1-types or -tanks with sci-fi guns ... so what.
The chaos warmammoth being listed as 'disorganised snuffleuppagus' is without doubt my favourite
Not if you have dyslexia
Looks l ike they 3D printed a massive reinforced spine and two of the most gigantic balls to not just get intimated by the Lawsuit bullies.
Must have been on that Elgoo Pluto printer…
The moment GW became a publicly traded company, the legions of fans (who were already hundreds or thousand of local currency into the hobby) and the health of the hobby went to the bottom of the priority list. Money first, everything else much lower.
The most interesting moment is that a client is a source of money. The only workable way to get more money is to do the best for a client. If not than a client is exactly going to leave you forever.
@@Haroith That's why their entire business model now is to suck in kids spending their parents money, who will not stick with the hobby, and wash out to be replaced about another round of kids spending their parents money. Short of the population of kids suddenly dropping drastically, they will always have a new round of suckers on which to prey.
@@Haroith but all you need to do is keep reeling in the latest batch of twelve year olds, never mind if they leave by the time they're fourteen.
@@samsowden That will only work to a certain point. When grown-ups with jobs and real free money to spare are leaving in droves, how far will that runlet of 12 year olds bring you, who convince their parents to spend money for that hobby? Particularly in a quite dire economical situation? And even the whales will get you just so and so far, because they will still need someone to compete against.
Even more so, they shareholders will not be happy with 'just' a constant influx of money, they usually expect constantly increasing profits, whether this is feasible or not. And when the company begins to fail and die, they also usually will just drop those shares faster than one can say 'hot potato' and move on to (still) greener pastures, like the locusts they are. This is something the GW management either fails to understand, that they try to please people who give a crap about the company dying as a result, or they are in a situation where they simply can't get out of this vicious cycle anymore.
@@Furzkampfbomber kids tend to have enough disposable income for a hobby like this. If they're into it enough they'll work chores and spend it at GW.
GWS: “take that stuff down!”
3DCults: “I’m disinclined to acquiesce your request”
GWS: “…..”
3DCults: “means no”
Gw should really make their price point more enticing to combat 3d printing. I 3d print non proxy models to paint as there are so many good ones out there (artisan guilds etc) but it is still a faff to do at the low price resin costs when you factor in time/effort, fails, cleaning and maintenance.
Gw needs to realise their big fish, small pond days have passed them. They need to adapt rather than keep trying to force their current sales model.
They also cant negate the investments made. I don't like how old stuff just gets pushed aside because new shiny things have way better rules. I spent all sorts of hours making a piece of crap thing of plastic on a sprue into a worth a damn piece of art that helps advertise their game and play in public which has attracted new players. I am not working this hard for something thats suppose to be fun, and then be made to reinvest in new stuff I dont want cause they dont appreciate the work I did already. So I have no sympathy for them, they dont care about the love and support I've given to them for decades. Its a pretty simple thing. And a monolith is almost 200$. They can stick every single one of them right up their pee hole.
I totally agree, but I think that to take it one step further, they could even get into the business itself.
Imagine this, you can buy an official games workshop printer, which can print all files, but also specific protected official GW files.
Sort of like with videogames, if you want to be able to print the file, you have to be logged in in a software and connect your printer. You could still print models and give them to your friends, but at least you couldn't send them around on the internet without cracking or so.
And now imagine this, it's all an optimized package. you buy the GW printer, the GW resin and you buy a file from a massive library of licensed high quality official models. And everything is optimized to work ideally, you don't have to think about support structures or printing speeds, you just click the button and you get a perfect modell....
i think people would buy that.
@@petergriffin4629 its not going to make it easier to players, they would just make it extremely expensive either way, want to print a marine squad? 40$ please, its that or your GW 3d printer is just going to be a few-hundred dollars paperweight
This puts me in mind of the lawsuits around electric guitars, where it was ruled that the only part of a guitar Fender could actually copyright was the shape of the headstock.
My prediction is that a lawsuit will result in a similar ruling, i.e. GW can copyright legion symbols but the general shape of armoured humanoid scale models is too generic and existed pre-GW.
The GW v Chapterhouse Studios case already determined (in that US district, at least) that the shape of the GW space marine shoulder pad couldn't be claimed as copyright/trademark since the shape is too generic.
@@saldiven2009 Nor even the Ultramarine's emblem nor many others. The Chaos Star is not actually a new symbol. Pretty much all of the symbols GW uses are derivative at best and outright rip-offs most of the time.
Hunting for STL's has always been something of an art form. Best to bookmark competent creators when you stumble across them. Will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out.
Worst case, creators add enough changes to models for GW to loose their case
It’s worth data hoarding good STLs too. Things have a habit of disappearing from hosted sites.
If you want to „hunt“ a bit more, check my latest trailer and kickstarter for some juicy #necroydtomblords ☠️
GW is literally just an old man that can't get over the fact that some of the new generation of hobbyists aren't bowing down to them and that there are actual options to choose from in the miniature hobby (big or small). 3D printing I will say is probably the way to go forward but I doubt it's immediately going to kill the physical side. Yet GW whines and complains that they're having business taken away, despite them constantly raising prices, setting bad images for themselves with how they handle people/situations (Miniac and now this) and overall show they just want a monopoly on the whole business.
@buzroy I won't deny that they're probably a big (if not the biggest) contender for helping make the miniature hobby boom and more appealing around that era. Hell, that's roughly when I got started back in highschool. But just because they helped jumpstart it, doesn't mean they can keep leading it forward. Their upcoming around that time might have something to do with their rebranding, new website and better CS, IIR. Nowadays, they're falling back into their old habits and mostly are doing what they can to make the most buck out of customers or better yet whales (the EA of miniatures). If they want to handle 3D printing, maybe actually lower the prices a bit to make it more enticing for people to join or keep collecting. Better yet, maybe start jumping on the bandwagon with limited services for personal use (maybe allowing extra reaper chaingun prints for havocs so you aren't forced with ONE in the "new" kit).
Not a good metaphor. Not behaving like an old man as old men understand they’re on the way out and often very willingly handover to the next generation (as do old women). They’re behaving like a multinational company, which means they don’t give a fig about individuals only about their company’s wellbeing and profitability.
Yes! Cracking good analogy!
@buzroy We'll have to agree to disagree there
No one forces you to buy GW. They make shitty rules and gorgeous models.
So skip the rules and only buy the models you really want (say no to buy a big box for 5 new models not sodl seperatly)....
These people who sell products and cry they can't use other people stuff to make mopney are bound to lose. as copyright lawyer I know, many songwriters say "fun" to fans being creative but when soemone sells and refuse to stop selling once you tell them to? that si when they get angry.
What I think happened is that Gamza's response to GW's complaint was to put the models for free on cults3D. And they got scared that the response from every 3D artist was the same. That's why they didn't answer Gamza's claims. And after a few days, they tried to close the door to cults3D's distribution channel. I don't know where it will come to this. But I'm glad to see that cults3D has said, if you don't get paid it's fan art.
I support the notion to make Warmanners the new name for the hobby.
Or you could choose to say Warwomanners
They've lost against Gamza... they'll lose against Cults if Cults says STFU GW. This further makes me NOT want anything to do with purchasing ANY GW stuff. I hope the thuggery they employ kills off their fandom.
Basically the only thing that has given GW the ability to take the items down is the fact they have GW terms in their tags. Once those are gone GW can try to claim shapes all they want but it isn’t going to go how they like. Now they have makers who will most likely do near identical proxies out of spite. Oh and Gamza won his counter against GW claim,he is back online.
Good for gamza Gw are done in my eyes will not buy any of there product again
He's also put all the "infringing" files back up on his Patreon because GW failed to respond to their requests & consequently they've set a precedent for other creators
@@AtheSier @thadkew01 can you give me a little summary of what exactly happened to gamza? Why was he targeted anyways? Asking for a friend ;)
@@AtheSier what happened exactly with Gamza?
@@tablehammer he poked the bear. Gamza literally called out GWs ridiculous and excessive pricing. While also pointing out they use the same tech, with screen shots of minis on their store with clear layer lines.
GW requested Patreon remove some necron "inspired" stl's on the basis of copyright. Gamza challenged it by first taking them off Patreon & giving them away on Cults (you seeing a pattern as to why GW went for them next - pure coincidence 🤔), then challenging the claim through Patreon.
Patreon requested a response from GW & they didn't within the time requested & so now Gamza has put everything back & Patreon has stated they will not auto-enforce GW claims against any of his existing work.
It was a beautiful thing to behold & Cults position shows it is only the trademark terms that they can enforce
3D printer go BRRRR...
GW needs to go belly-up, and I absolutely agree with 3D cults and agree with many of the comments here that if it comes to court, GW are going to get thrown out.
I wonder how Warhammer would turn out if it went the way of the SCP Foundation.
Goodness gracious that I've gotten some terabytes of files already. Next month I'll go in a buy a lot of the stuff I've been waiting on, to support independent sculptors and Cults3D. Yeah, I'll buy more of the most egregiously similar stuff I can find, just to spite Grandma Wendy. And yeah, I'll make a point not to buy their paints or other hobby materials either, because they don't deserve my money.
Based Citadel abstinency
Good on you man, I've done much the same. Quit using GW paints entirely years ago and haven't touched them since. Just as a real "F-you" to them, I've entered and won painting contests with other companies paint products where a bunch of .y competition were using exclusively GW paints. Just further proof GW ain't the best in the business, haha
Hey...hey... bro, gota any of them STL files ::Scratches neck like a crack head::
@@SlocumJoe7740 Mate, if I shared them I wouldn't do it on a public forum.
@@rangda_prime lol Just messing with ya. Plus you don't want Big Brother James Workshop seeing the cache
Man if 3D Cults does take them on in court, I will be happy to throw the price of a couple of Forgeworld Warhound Titans at any legal defense fund they setup.
Now that you write it... feels really compelling to donate some money for even more and better lawyers against GW.
Are we waiting for a hero to challenge them? To slay the dragon?
@@KrullMaestaren Well Chapterhouse Studios essentially sacrificed themselves for the good of everyone else. It'd due to them taking on that battle that all of us, consumers and producers of aftermarket parts have these options.
If GW takes on Cults and wins, the world will be a much, much darker place for us consumers. It's in the best interests of us consumers AND artists to throw or weight (financially) behind Cults if this does come to a head.
If GW made reasonably priced, multi-pose/posable miniatures, I wouldn't own a 3d printer and hundreds of gigabytes of stl files.
If GW made a game that wasn't so full of bloat that it took half a day to play through with an army you don't have dozens of practice games with, I wouldn't have sites like Wahapedia bookmarked instead of buying codecies/battletomes and I wouldn't have hundreds of dollars of minis from other tabletop games - that money would've been spent on GW products instead.
All of this is entirely in reaction to Games Workshop. They might not like it, but this is the reality their actions have created.
Check my latest trailer + kickstarters for reasonably priced files 💸☠️
Couldn’t agree more with you about GW’s bloatware rules. Even if you know them well they still produce a deeply unsatisfying game, and each update just gets worse. So many better games out there these days, some of them with barely 10 pages of really fun rules.
1:02 ah yes GW the tall vampire mommy of the wargaming community, that it's big, self entitled, sucks the life out of anything it touches yet people still simp for it, for some reason and, is probably allergic to sunlight
Perfect description of GW
@@lucianoaguero6795 thank you
GW can either adapt or go the way of Blockbusters, Border's Books and GameStop. I don't imagine it would be that hard to not only sell their STL's and PDF's online, but add an app that lets you customize your models, log your battles, and track your army roster online. Would be especially useful for Bloodbowl players.
I appreciate Cults3D standing their ground. I wouldn't be able to do my work without them.
Same here! 💪🏻🤞🏻
Will they fight
right guard deodorant for the tanks we used to make ?
I think the only real solution to our extremely-less-than-ideal relationship with Games Workshop is for the miniature gaming/painting community to wean itself from GW's IPs. All of this bizarre obsession with Warhammer where it's put on a pedestal like it's the best thing ever made, and the idea that it has to be kept alive and thriving at all cost, are exactly why GW asks us to pay baffling prices and feels free to engage in anti-consumer practices. I collect/paint/play all all of GW's games, especially their specialist games--but when I saw the price of Age of Darkness and then the current Warcry box, it hit me that if we keep supporting this, these leaps in what they ask us for will see no end. Everything I buy from GW is just adding to the problem.
Much better and more enjoyable games out there these days. GW had the advantage of being one of the first into fantasy gaming. And they’ve created a massive network of gaming stores that probably wouldn’t exist without them. But I’ve never bought a GW mini or played in one of their stores or (knowingly) played any of their rule sets.
The world they created is amazing and has so many great stories, it feels like the second great mythology, after Tolkien (sorry D&D). This is what keeps people invested. I've stopped playing after they killed Fantasy Battles, but still read the old books.
@@krinkrin5982 - Yes, I’ve heard a bit of the lore, though it strikes me as shockingly negative overall. A universe of peoples all trying to kill eachother? Uggh!
@@sirrathersplendid4825 Not at all.
On the large scale, the three main human nations (Empire, Kislev, and to a lesser extent Bretonnia) have what is essentially an alliance. Sure, there are still border skirmishes from time to time because greedy nobles, but they generally don't go to war.
The dwarves are in an eternal alliance with the empire, and while they won't be caught dead dealing with an elf, they don't go marching into each other's houses trying to burn them down either (not anymore).
The south haven't seen a major war from what I understand in a long time either. There are just the usual skirmishes between nobles and independent towns, as was seen in Italy. Tomb kings just don't like anyone trespassing.
Lizardmen are usually content keeping to themselves, unless you steal something of theirs. Ogres are more interested in gold and good food than attacking anyone (but they will if you give them a reason).
The other factions are essentially raiders though. Norska is Vikings in all but name. Chaos Dwarves are the Persian Empire, Dark Elves are outright pirates and practice blood sacrifice. Greenskins live for fighting. Beastmen are simply the archetypal Goth barbarians. The only culture that has murder as the end-all-be-all are the Skaven.
The world might be shockingly negative by today's standards, but it doesn't depart that far from what happened in history, with small scale skirmishing being the norm, and countries often being at war nearly constantly.
The history of the world is over 2000 years long, and the game's stories usually focus on the big fights because it's a battle game, and so that is what interests people most.
@@krinkrin5982 - I don’t know that much of the lore. The bits that really struck me were the mutant peoples all out to exterminate each other, mainly for reasons of pseudo-religious doctrine. Rather a depressing future to my mind.
I understand the appeal of the strange creatures and aliens especially when it comes to modelling, but I personally prefer to concentrate on gaming actual historical reality, which has far more depth and texture, and still affects everyday life today.
This was interesting to watch. New viewer here. I like that you brought up the author of "Spots the Space Marine". That incident pretty much made GW scrub all their socials and shut down their official forums. I foresee this going the same as Chapterhouse Studios lawsuit. Both sides won/lost but one of the key features of CHS winning was they were producing parts that GW never did (like chapter shoulder pads), so there was no market infringement.
I really think GW could help itself by getting into the 3D field. They could release their own machines with specialty files (chip locked, so not open-source) and sell older models that users could print themselves. Even selling GW branded resin or filament. It would be costly but they could make money on it, especially if their machine prints normal files as well.
What happened with chapterhouse studios? You got a small summary for me?
@@tablehammer Chapterhouse Studios was a tiny, one-man operation making miniatures with spin casting in his basement back about 15 years ago or so. He was most well known for making chapter specific shoulder pads, chapter specific Rhino doors, and a torso to be used with a GW eldar jetbike model to create a warlock on jetbike (which GW had refused to make for the 20 years or so that option was available in the game).
GW sent a C&D letter, demanding that CHS shut down their operation entirely and turn over every dollar of profit that CHS had made in its existence. GW had shut down other operations with similar threats in the past. However, CHS managed to get pro-bono representation from two of the largest intellectual property legal firms in the USA because some of the claims GW was making were so expansive that these firms thought that it would be bad precedent for GW to win.
From memory, GW claimed some 180 instances of violation. Through the process of discovery, pre-trial filings, and the trial itself, GW was shown to be in a pretty bad place where IP was concerned. Eventually, those 180 instances of violation was pared down to roughly 1/3 that GW won. The rest were either withdrawn or thrown out. GW had claimed ownership of words like elf, orc, dwarf, centurion, and legion. They claimed ownership of symbols like sergeant's chevrons. They claimed to own the word and idea of the space marine. They claimed ownership of the chaos star. And, a bunch of other stuff that could be demonstrated to have been created by other people before GW even existed. For example, take the chaos star; GW was first exposed to the chaos star before GW existed, and the original company (Citadel Miniatures) had been contracted to make miniatures based on Michael Moorcock's Elric novels. Heck, even GW's aesthetic for eldar models to this day (the high, peaked helmet) are based directly off of the models made for the Vadhagh race based off of descriptions from Moorcock's novels back in the 1970's. If you google "Citadel Miniatures Corum," you can find images of the proto-eldar/proto-high elf.
There were other major issues. GW had done a lot of their original work in the 1980's using contractors for the artwork, both images for books and actual physical models, but had never had signed contracts transferring ownership of the copyright to those productions to GW, so the original artists still legally owned the things that GW was suing over, claiming their own ownership. It was discovered that during the actual trial, GW legal representation was contacting some of these artists trying to get them to sign over the IP ownership. In the trial, it was pointed out how much of GW's ideas were drawn from existing things like Necrons=Terminator and Tyranids=Aliens.
In the end, as I mentioned, GW won on about 1/3 of their claims. GW was going to file an appeal, but CHS's representation was also planning on filing an appeal because the representation thought that GW shouldn't have won on any of their positions. In the end, the owner of CHS was super burned out of this legal proceeding; it had been dragging on for about three years by the end of the trial. He signed a confidential settlement with GW. He continued making things for a while after that, but I think he eventually shut down the operation. It probably just wasn't worth it to him anymore since he didn't really make any money off of it, anyway.
On the GW side, this lawsuit started a massive revamping of the entire catalog. The vast majority of their entire product line was renamed. Space Marines became Adeptus Astartes (because GW didn't own Space Marine). Eldar became Aeldari (because GW didn't own Eldar). Imperial Guard became Astra Militarum (because GW didn't own Imperial Guard). Etc.
Edit: One last thing. During the process, there was a huge thread on Dakka Dakka discussing the case, and there were several lawyers and IP law experts who were commenting, posting links to legal filings, and giving explanations for what everything meant. Based on the length of the case, the number of motions and filings, etc., these guys estimated that GW spent into the seven figures pursuing this case in legal expenses for a case in which the court ordered CHS to pay GW $25,000.
@@saldiven2009 thanks a lot for taking the time! 🔥 Very interesting topic - since it is still dangerous today to name your files „Eldar“ or „Space Marine“ and receive a letter by GW as I heard…
@@saldiven2009 Thank you for the explanation for me, I was sick and you summed it up better than I could have.
@@tablehammer Yes, this is why Spots the Space Marine was mentioned. They went against the author for the term even though it was and is in public domain. They used Trademark laws, it was highly reported as Copyright but they are different, they could not enforce this since various IPs still in use use the term. Essentially GW was forced to try to take down the author by enforcing their TM or lose it.
If it wasn't for celebrities siding with the author I have no doubt GW would have swept over the author, they shut down the forums/socials to prevent outrage and still lost.
That is why I am glad the site is going against GW on this. GW will financially bury anyone (like the above CHS suit) similar to how the Mouse will. (shame I had to censor the mega-company)
Sometimes, Geedubs are complete and utter cults.
”I speak from experience here”
You little...
"I got the 3d hosting website, you got the briefcase, all in the game though right"
Cults 3D comin'!
As a solicitor myself, and considering the CDPA 1988, I do think there is a very strong argument to say that copyrighted material has been infringed. Ie, I design a product, someone else sells it for a profit. I don't think this is evil corporate venture. I do however, find myself concerned about the freedom to share designs/sell designs etc. Gov is too busy to amend legislation at this point but it will come. To rename something to avoid copyright, is a deliberate attempt to avoid copyright...
In the US, if the alleged infringer has sufficiently transformed the copyrighted material, that functions as an affirmative defense. Plastic -> 3D file is a transformation, but is it sufficient?
It's blatant copying and everyone knows it, but because they hate Games Workshop they do some moral gymnastics to justify it. It's always a different story when it's a small-time creator though; if a one-man band sculptor is being ruined by piracy, he gets sympathy.
I love all the 3D print clones of GW stuff, I think they're great, but if this was a struggling sculptor/model maker working out of a back bedroom, everyone would agree that he has the right to protect his IP.
GW is going after shit that is not even close to there shit claiming copyright over it and it's not even close to there shit
I don't think GW is going to step forward and fight this. They remember Chapterhouse, and they know that they have, at best, a VERY weak hold on any of their claims. They know it will come up in court if they fight. There is a reason GW only fight smaller creators. Because small creators can't fight them back. Cults is just big enough to be another Chapter House of this goes to court, and GW doesn't want to lose even more of their claims. So, yeah, I don't think GW is going to fight on this. I just think they are going to back down in the end
What happened with this Chapterhouse?
@@mrmaster9801 They won but filed bankruptcy in the aftermath due to legal fees? I think? A pyrrhic victory. You can win the war but still be so devastated that you don't recover.
The only reason the Chapterhouse Studios case went the way it did is because CHS got pro-bono representation from a couple of the biggest IP law firms in the USA. Without that, CHS would have been bullied out of existence like everyone else doing the same thing he was doing before his case. CHS was just a one-man operation doing spin-casting out of his basement.
@@mrmaster9801 They lost their supposed claim to powerarmor, spacemarines, imperial guard, and nearly all of their overreaching trademarks and copyrights. Which is why they terminated WHFB and you got a game of silly names from then on. Chapterhourse was making and selling "bitz" for gw products using Space Marine, etc GW claimed they owned Space Marine. They lost.. badly.
Basically GW tries to claim copyright on things that have been part of greater science fiction for the last 100 years. I mean look at Robert A. Heinlen's work. He basically created the prototypical imperial guard and fascist ethno-state that 40K copies wholesale.
Another reason copyright holders don't go after fan works is that copyright law - on the face of it - only protects *_the expression_* of an idea, not the idea itself, so wouldn't apply to characters and stories... only to the text of a book or the images and sounds of a film. The potential damage from a definitive court ruling on the matter would likely bankrupt Hollywood, even if it allowed them to smack down some "you stole my story idea" idiots trying to shake them down for a couple of $million.
"so wouldn't apply to characters and stories" that must be why luke skywalker and mickey mouse show up in other studios' big-budget productions. Oh wait, no they don't, because using characters from a copyrighted work constitutes making a derivative work, which infringes.
@@jugglervr Section 21 of the _Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988_ defines adaptation as:
"(a)in relation to a literary work, other than a computer program or a database, or in relation to a dramatic work, means-
(i)a translation of the work;
(ii)a version of a dramatic work in which it is converted into a non-dramatic work or, as the case may be, of a non-dramatic work in which it is converted into a dramatic work;
(iii)a version of the work in which the story or action is conveyed wholly or mainly by means of pictures in a form suitable for reproduction in a book, or in a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical;"
Show me where characters and stories are protected by the actual legislation.
Yeah no GW will lose, GW is well known for giving copyright stuff out and never following up because they have no legal case at all, they have done this in the past (bullying) GW thinks it owns common words! GW think it owns Latin! GW is like Paris Hilton back in the day when she wanted to copyright "That's hot" they are going after words!! Again they done this in the past and have been dismissed many many times before ever going to court.
I'll bet you 20 shrutebucks that GW will win this case. People that blatently rip off their molds 1:1 are just asking for legal action.
@@rbfishcs123 They aren't going after models they are going after words. Also any models that aren't being used to make money would be fine in that case hell look at the amount of artists that make money selling their own Disney works nevermind giving them away. Also GW is well known for doing this at one stage they went after third party bit and model sellers that made their own and they lost big time. Their is a reason they don't follow up with their threats, there is a reason they only go after small independent creators and not bigger model makers. Fear.
@@yagsipcc287 Is it known if the 30% of ChapterHouse lawsuits won by GW was over names like "Heresy Era Terminators"?
If so Cults has already won.
Dating myself a bit, but this reminds me of how TSR published their Indiana Jones RPG and attempted to trademark "Nazi".
well, this time it is different as there are 1:1 copies sold on Cults3D, not just the usual close but different that is given away for free so you can claim fair use, but literally 1:1 scans sold as printable files
all hate to GW but this time they have all the law behind them
not the usual "we own Space Marine" or not knowing the difference between Trademark or Copyright, but 1:1 scan of a Spartan tank were they kindly asked them to remove those files from sale, no chance they gonna lose this one
What took (at this point) decades for the music, games and movie industry to understand is that if you just make it easy enough (or cheap enough) people won't look for grey/black market solutions, it will simply die.
So how does a miniatures company do this, does it perhaps reduce its prices or look into selling 3d prints of their own? Sell other talented creators in a marketplace?
Nah just sue them into the ground that'll work.
GW already uses 3d printing as part of their prototyping stage of miniature design. So they already have the print ready stl files for all their models designed since they started doing that.
The only reason they haven't sold them yet is they know it will have less profits than just selling models.
Also their injection modeled plastic models are not exaclty expensive, they make massive profit off each box (for reference the cardboard box the sprue are sold in actually costs more at the scale they make them than the sprues themselves). GW could easily sell their models for dirt cheap and still make profits. They would jsut make less profit, they are going to milk the cow as hard as possible for as long as possible.
I downloaded some free 'Angry rats' models off cults a few months ago. Better sculpts than the entire Skaven range, and I'm pretty sure it's just some dude in Eastern Europe cranking them out (all the files were in Cyrillic. Russian language minor is finally paying off!). GW doesn't give a rat's ass about Skaven players, so our unsung heroes on Cults are filling a niche.
One could be forgiven for thinking the “Warhammer” hobby, as GW themselves call it, has become much more than simply a GW IP-it’s now synonymous with miniature painting/wargaming.
I love Discourse, but as someone who's been an IP attorney for 20 years, I've got to say the description of the differences between trademarks and copyright were a little sketchy. You can register a copyright, and you can get trademark rights without registering a trademark. What distinguishes a trademark is its ability to identify the source of a product for consumers.
Close enough for lay people.
We need to make a community translation list.
So you can 3d print a working gun and that's fine but if you print an astartes space marine?
They'll throw away the key....
Depends on where they go to court. The US has essentially stated stls are considered speech so the fan art argument has a really good chance.
That depends. The fan art principle relies on the not for profit clause (it's standard in most countries; copyright only prevents someone profiting from your work, it doesn't actually prevent them making a copy for other purposes - for example to create a parody). The problem is it only really works if you're also the creator. The issue for Cults3D is that it's fundamentally in the same position as Napster; even if money isn't changing hands along with the 'infringing' materials GW can argue the site itself draws a profit from them being there, and assuming they went to court in the US it'll be the Napster precedent they'll be pointing to.
Though that said the principle hasn't really been tested with 3D artwork. The problem for GW would be proving copyright infringement to begin with - if I sculpt something that looks like an Eldar warrior and call it a space elf the onus would be on GW to prove I was copying their work rather than creating my own interpretation of the same basic concept. That's where it gets risky for GW, particularly since those kind of arguments tend to go to jury (just imagine GW's legal team having to explain, to a group of laymen, what an Ork Warboss is without using the phrase 'space orc').
@@markwatson8714 wouldn’t the chapterhouse case be a much more recent case to base precedent on?
@@jonathanscott5932 Chapterhouse was direct copyright infringement (they produced and sold the materials themselves). Cults3D simply host files produced by third parties, so the charge against them would (presumably) be facilitating infringement. Although there may be some elements of the Chapterhouse case that could be considered depending on the charges, particularly around use of GW TM terms and imagery.
Well, this issue was tested a fair bit in the litigation GW had with "Chapterhouse".
A fairly small company gave them a big black eye on the legal front, it created the GW strategy of "no rules released without the model".
They found that if they make a rule for a unit, if someone else makes the model first, GW may be in trouble for copyright.
GW is already in a bit of trouble trying to lock away all fan fiction under a paywall of "Warhammer+", I was surprised on the up-tick of Battletech from that mess.
The 3D genie is out of the bottle, I am seeing models with better production values from the public than some of their latest ones.
They "should" be selling a 3D printer with "special" resin and an end to end encryption system where any model in their line could be printed with a monthly subscription.
Sure there may be a way to work around it BUT they seem to still be doubling down on insane expensive models.
The sooner the 3D printer becomes an easy to use appliance for the "average" consumer (it is pretty close), they will lose their customer base in droves.
The weird fact is that there was a time that an official GW website actually hosted fanmade scenario's, conversions, home rules, scratch builds,... I know, it was probably in the age that the animals still were able to speak, but anyhow it DID exist. So what did change at the top of GW? In my opinion, I don't think they love their own game anymore and it's just hitting the numbers.
The contrast with FFG for example is huge: for almost every game, they host an entire forum themselves, where they encourage fans to think out of the box, to guide them in things like houserules and stuff and yes, I've even found topics like scratch building AND models that can be used as proxies in their games! Every forum is monitored by their staff and they actually use this (at least that's what I suspect) as kind of a market research, because what better way to see what your customers want your game to be or become?
Art expert: Ah' yes here we have the 'Daphne Waifu' next to the 'Day with Frank'
Gallery patron: Amazing!!
The final battle approaches Battle Brothers.
We must ensure we are oriented 45 degrees and that our supports are sound.
I still find it nuts they have warhammer trademarked. It is literally a category of weapons that has existed since the 2nd century BC. This would be like someone trademarking the word cheese and no one else can use it.
My prediction (with absolutely no legal background).
Companies will argue the basis that since GW don’t actually offer STL files, they can’t argue that these companies are taking anything away from them.
The products might look alike but they are clearly different content offerings.
GW would then either have to drop the fight or offer their own STLs.
Then they start selling exceedingly overpriced STL files with no supports.
Like I said, I have no legal background so take this with a huge grain of salt. But I could see GW moving into STLs if only to protect that profit margin.
In addition to the legal aspects, from a business perspective removing the terms of copyrighted items is a workaround. GW wants to make proxies harder to find.
Good point. The community would need to agree on proxy terms eg. 40x or 40000
Gw looks like the worst samples of old men. 'No, old ways are better! No, you will live in the past! Just because my greed!' It happened many times before. It always fails. They cannot stop progress. They cannot stop Time.
GW has become the Imperium LOL
@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 exactly... No. Gw makes the same mistake as many-many times before other companies had made. There are many obvious examples: books, music, films, computer games, science documents, medicine at last.
The idea of intellectual property seems to be good. But. Not always. The big problem is protection of it. Do you have power to prevent everyone from making something like your invention?
I wish there were a list of the models they want removed. For you know, research purposes.
Might wanna eat a tuna with mayo while you wait
If you want to research some cool models for your digital pile of shame, check my latest video 😁 #necroydtomblords ☠️
I’d love to see GW lose, but based on the experience some small creators have had with Cults3D playing fast and loose with their terms of service, I worry that Cults is either taking actions without consulting legal counsel or consulting *competent* legal counsel.
Loool, Games Workshop just directly declared war on anybody that attempts to paint their minis according to the box art. If you don’t work for the company, then technically it’s ALL fan art
Interestingly, GW cannot hold trademarks on either ultramarines(that's held by the french military) or Space Marine(heinlein estate holds it). It's actually weird as hell that ultramarines is one of the words they'll autoflag.
So, we just need a list of words to use that aren't trademarked by GW? Maybe something like Eldar, or Imperial Guard, or Orcs, Dark [faction], or even, should we wish, grimdark?
maybe if GW didn't charge extortionate prices for models people wouldn't be so inclined to produce 3d models of their products.
Eventually maybe. But for right now, 3d printing of "not space marines" would be much less if the GW prices were less.
Regardless of what one thinks of either the copyright issue or 3d printing, it's pretty clear that Games Workshop is desperately fighting to preserve their existing, physical-product-based business model against technological advances. But like Don Quixote versus the windmill, that's a fight they ultimately won't win.
This is what Bones Minatures did when they started making plastic minis. They just named thing different but similar on monsters they didn't have right to name but made it in detail.
For people talking about Gamza, listen to what he said. He talked about sending a counter respond to which GW failed to respond to, that is what got him back on Patreon. I love that he put the middle finger up to on this and find it hilarious that they let it go through without challenging it. I have zero legal background, but I wonder if this will help anyone's future legal argument with GW in some way.
Time to see how big GWs war chest for legal battles has grown.
Edit. Oh shit it's huge, we're fucked.
"You got the briefcase. I got the fan-art STL files. It's all in the game yo."
The best part is that the digital data in two .stl files can be completely different but print the same object simply by changing some settings and the like. In fact, as long as the object doesn't have rotational symmetry, just rotating it 90° in one direction can make it completely different as far as the digital data is concerned. Thus things often used in copyright trawling (such as hash codes and the like) are completely useless.
I always find it hilarious that GW, a company known for lifting IP, pushes Copyright law so hard. Necrons, Genestealers, and Catchatan's with Sly Marbo to name just a few.
There are actually two types of trademarks, registered trade marks (®) that you do need to register with an official body, and then a trade mark (™) in some countries, including the UK, you can slap on whatever you want but doesn't necessarily hold any weight until it's tested in court. ™ can mean ® in some countries but there's no hard and fast global rule around this.
More importantly, trade marks apply to specific things. You can't register a word to be trade marked in all instances. You can trademark ultramarine, yes it's a colour, but there are loads of registered TMs for ultramarine, from cigarettes to species of plants. There isn't actually a registered TM for ultramarine(s) in the UK relating to toys and games or printed materials.
I don't think GW is relying on trademarks for the takedown... I think they're lazily using those terms as keyword searches to identify "infringing" models, and flagging them all. By removing the keywords, GW would - in theory - have to inspect each model before making a claim, rather than just spamming DMCA takedowns and making other people do the work.
a wise skeleton once said never to throw stones if you live in a glass house and gw has a lovely glass house they spent years making it and it may only take one court case to go well for them to shatter after all I'm sure they have more than one thing in 40k that resembles some popluar series
Perhaps I missed something, but I think Cults only asked to remove those terms from the names and descriptions of the files, but not necessarily the tags that you can search with.
" space marines" was include in a pprrvious canpaign against booka by GW, but it was denied by copyright the term. But GW tried
"I speak from experience here" cracked me up 😂
Better to crack you up than to crack up you 👍😁
I think GW overcharges for everything and have complicated bloated rulesets, but I'm okay with GW going after 1:1 replications of their work. Patents and copyright infringements are a real thing. If they aren't identical (or near identical) they don't really have a leg to stand on though.
One of the real problems is that copyright also covers what's known as "derivative" works and that can be iffy. Would a model which is a 1:1 copy of a GW model but in a different pose (say Guilliman grabbing his crotch and thrusting) count as derivative, probably. A real famous case for showing how iffy this can be was when Sergio Leone made Fistful of Dollars and was successfully sued by Akira Kurosawa because the courts ruled that the Spaghetti Western was a derivative work of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo".
@@TheGlennsof if you watch both of the movies they are very very close...the only difference is the setting...even the damn story beats are the same. the case wasn't iffy at all.
I agree, with the very important exception of compatible bits (heads, weapons/equipment, shoulder pads, etc.), which BTW paranoid me thinks it's one of the major reasons behind monopose sculpts and all the weird assembly parts a models is separated on a sprue.
Seriously, sometimes you wonder the reasoning that motivated splitting a head in three parts with the chin attached to the neck and front torso, the face and skull attached to a shoulder and the hair attached to the other shoulder.
@@cowkingkiller Oh I know. Some scenes are basically shot for shot but the same could be said for a lot of 3d models. They can be different but they're basically the same model.
GW's own IP is derivative though, and as such, huge swaths of it may be invalid. There's not enough money at stake for the big guns to come out though.
I'm very interested to see where this case goes. I don't 3D print but I think its something that GW should be embracing, look at what Privateer Press recently announced about Warmachine.
GW did have a statement years ago that it was fine to 3d print models as long as they weren't exact replicas and weren't used in there tournaments so they don't have anything but their TM to rely on
(at least in the U.S.) TM does NOT need to be registered. You simply need to be trading using that term or symbol to identify your product. Registered trademarks carry more weight, which is why the coca cola company registers "Coke" and their main phrases, but they often don't bother registering terms for one-off campaigns. This is why TM and R are used for specific purposes.
Prefacing this with the fact that I 3d print the majority of my 40k armies because the models are way too expensive. Unfortunately, I can see why GW would be upset with exact copies of models being offered for free. Given some work, you could probably pass it off as the real deal in tournaments unless looked at under very close inspection (ridges from resin printing). Now models that are slightly different, obviously can't be used in a tournament setting and would in my mind fall under fan art. Exact copies aren't really "fan art" in my mind, that's "GW's art". I feel like fan art implies some kind of change to the source material.
The great thing about cults3D, most of the Artists already use pisstake names 🤣
It depends on what country Cults3D is in as each country has different copyright/trademark laws. witch is why fan fiction/ fan art is so hard for right holders to fight specifically if one isn't making money off it. also according to US law most fan art and fiction is considered to be adjacent works to the original so they could be copyrighted too.
In the USA you can and must register a copyright on each creationin order to bring suite in court. It's not necessary always required but it definitely does make it easier. Then it's quite enforceable under the law for pretty much anything that's a copy or derivative of the registered copyrighted materials as long as it is unique enough.
basically they've been driving me to think of everything in OPR names. Just finished painting my Start Collecting box of Saurians, they look cool on the shelf next to my ( playable! ) Chivalrous Kingdom knights lol
Netflix was an long term existential threat to the entire business model of Blockbuster, and we know how that worked out. GW can go down this route and end up like Blockbuster, or adapt and end up like Netflix.
Well … time to go see if GW screwed my Cults 3D store. I use all those keywords BUT my STL’s are not model recreation’s, BUT used for AoS and 40K.
Interesting, very interesting!
Thank you for all your efforts in putting this together 😊
Catalyst games did this to thingiverse and they removed thousands of stuff tagged under tags like robot etc, was ludicrous
Games Workshop needs to get with the times and sell 3d Printable models on their website. If 3d Cults takes down these files, all of them will end up on the pirate bay the next day.
Etsy does this all the time. If I’m looking for a mini of Tifa Lockhart from FF7 what you really have to look for is “(busty) sporty fighter.”
I think there’s also a line between internment and STLs of long-OOP models as well. The Space Marine you showed roughly at 18:00 was a second edition model and hasn’t even been readily available via eBay or anything in two decades or more. I have that file though, and I love the look off the old stuff I started playing with, and will still include prints of them here and there as “squad filler” so my really customized stuff looks that much more showy. If there’s STLs of even direct copies of minis GW doesn’t make or sell anymore, there’s no harm being done to the company by their free distribution and nobody else is making money from the IP. I couldn’t pay GW for OOP Legion of the Damned models anymore even if I wanted to because they don’t offer them, so they’re not losing money when I decide to print them, cast copies from my personal collection, or even get some from good quality recasters.
I seem to remember something a while back about Google not liking media and websites saying ‘Just google X’ as it would affect their copyright.
They may take away my plastic and resin but they can never take away my paper and cardboard cutouts!
Just started watching your content and it has been amazing so far. I think you are getting me interested in Carnevale. You talk very highly of the game and it seems rather fun and dynamic. Would love to see a deep dive on the game at some point!
as a terrain maker, i can tell you its been key word used for take down and not the model it self, I have only seen stuff taken down for using a gw word, and the same model go back up with out gw words and have been up for years.
I love your videos.
You must be really smart if you can teach such difficult topics to the 5 yr old inside my brain.
But to be serious, GW still can up the prices on their books. If everyone 3D prints their models many would still buy the rules to actually play them.
Yeaterday Gamza informed that GW did not follow through with their claims against him and backed down.
Honestly games workshops should sell stl files and I guarantee people would buy them in droves while you can't overcharge for plastic they could put more effort into producing more stl files to download
doesn't mean you can't do eldar or chaos or renegade or space marine, the hard ones for the community are things like necrons or tau or tyranids, things with specific trademarked names
i like to think that the main legal dude at cults went "let's see these GW chaps have filed over 200 lawsuits in the last few years ,,, and they have won ,,, oh only 2? bring it on "
That pink "play toy" needs more skulls on it.
Games Workshop and a Court Case? Discourse really is in her element.
You can tell because of the clown nose
@@DiscourseMinis Sideshow Bob, "What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?"
Sideshow Mel, "I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton in that manner!"
I think GW should embrace the technology and start sealing STL files for their products.
Depending on the country Copy Write may still have to be registered as to verify that you your created it. Currently you can write about Conan from Cimeria because he is in the public domain, as long as it is the original Howard works but you cannot use Conan the Barbarian on the cover as that name is trademarked. Also be careful as elements created for the movies or comics by later authors will be copywrited.
But China... 😉🤣
all they truly need is to be 10% different to skip copyright claim
HELL YEAH
SOMEBODY IS FINALLY TAKING A STAND
I wanna buy all their models now.