HeroQuest 25th Anniversary Kickstarter

[odinsgrandson]

Hasbro never gave them permission- I couldn't find that they claimed to have it, only that they claimed Hasbro technically couldn't stop them from doing this. Game Zone hasn't been very clear all along.

From what I've pieced together, here's what happened. Hasbro stopped renewing the trademark on Heroquest (which makes sense for a product they are no longer producing). That means that the name can be trademarked by other people (in the US Moon Design jumped on it, and in Spain Gamezone grabbed it).

Now owning a trademark on Heroquest does not give you any rights to anything that was previously associated with the trademark. So, while they had the rights to use the name 'Heroquest' they were not within their rights to imply that this is connected to the old Milton Bradley game.

Hasbro could have brought them to court over that, and raked them over the coals (Hasbro has won cases in the past where game elements were re-worded- and in this case Gamezone was advertising that they would be plagierizing the old rules set). The Moon Design people were worried that they would be pulled into the case if they did nothing to stop this, so they sent a cease and desist to Kickstarter (they don't have any connection to Spain, so don't have to worry about that).

Kickstarter isn't invested in Heroquest like Game Zone is, and there was simply on reason for them to go to court over it. Moon Design's complaint was reasonable, so they took it down.

Jurisdiction on the internet is a very grey thing.

Where is any of it based? Where the company HQ is? Where the buyer is? Where the server is located? Where the host ISP is? Where the server owners are located?

Tis a nightmare, and why some internet retailers can obsfucate their sales in particular regions to be more tax efficient...

Yes, there are a lot of crazy things that need to be worked out in court. Is Kickstarter a method of distribution? Are they investors or customers? If they're investors, then this isn't a problem, but they don't behave like investors in a lot of ways (Kickstarters do not receive financial returns on their investments, for example).

The thing is, you don't want your Kickstarter project to be the one that has to suffer through that court case. And we probably don't want Heroquest to be the thing that decides it all.

I feel that Gamezone have been working in this gray area- where what they're doing should technically be legal even though it looks like it totally isn't. As a small company, that isn't a good place to stand (especially when you are so publicly showing how much value the property has).

[Mr Mystery]

Yup.

In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority are currently (though may be finished by now) consulting on the future regulation of the Crowd Funding industry within the UK. PDF about that available from this link. [url]http://www.fca.org.uk/static/documents/consultation-papers/cp13-13.pdf[/url]

And make no mistake, it's not an 'if' but a 'when' in regards to UK regulation.

Once published, I'll be able to give people a clearer idea of how international transactions balance out and that, at least in principal.

[Mr Mystery]

And it seems it's back. Or at least was as of last night.

[url=http://www.lanzanos.com/proyectos/heroquest-25-aniversario/necesidades/]You can find it here[/url]

Not going to say I'm not tempted, but feeling less enthused.

My main concern is that any issues this time won't occur until after funding is raised and spent....

Buyer beware on this one I'm afraid.