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  1. #1
    Fly Lord
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
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    Austin, Texas, United States
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    3,435

    Default Chapterhouse VS GW - Assets Frozen Announcement

    Chapterhouse has made an announcement on thier facebook page that they have had assets frozen pending an appearance in court to have the decision reversed.

    [URL="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chapterhouse-Studios/159482580794"]Chapterhouse Facebook[/URL]

    Our assets have been frozen.

    Yes, thats pretty much the issue. Many of you may know that Games Workshop has been in a legal battle with us for almost 4 years now.. maybe its 5...

    Anyways, they have asked the courts to freeze our assets and this has happened, this happened early September, not long after I posted the photos of the last set of products that were being produced and almost ready to ship.

    What does this mean? #1 we have no means to ship or produce or pay for anything... and I mean anything, internet, phone, gas, nothing. We cant use or accept funds (well technically we can accept but I wont do that without a means to ship out new orders).

    #2 the demon lines are sitting at the casters, waiting to be shipped but not able to be shipped to us. Even if they were shipped to me, I couldnt ship them out since they are technically "assets" and I am not allowed to ship them out.

    #3 the company infrastructure, email, website, is pretty much frozen.

    I am flying out (which GW allowed us to buy a ticket) to chicago next week to step in front of the courts and plead my case to have assets released and do business as normal until the appeal is addressed.

    For those of you who are understandably upset, I am sorry, this has been a long and hard road and many of you have stood by me. I wish it was better but its been very stressful and now I have learned that its not only my company at risk but my personal assets and home are being threatened as well now.

    Ill do my best to keep you all apprised.

    And to be clear, no orders were taken after I found about about the freeze mid september.
    Any orders that have issues were due to customers not putting in correct addresses and a new shipment needing to be sent (and couldnt due to the freeze).
    Or lost orders in the postal system.

    Nick
    Got some Juicy News? Email BoLS

  2. #2
    Chapter-Master
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Plymouth, England
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    Default

    Apologies i seem to have misplaced my sypmathy for these opportunist leeches...

    The fact a judge has agrred to a freeze suggests they support GWs side in this case
    Autarch, Shas'o, Chaos Lord and Decadant Lord of the Webway. And a Doctor!
    http://drlove42.blogspot.com/

  3. #3

    Default

    Hmm, is it normal to delay an announcement like this more than a month?

    Also [URL="http://chapterhousestudios.com"]http://chapterhousestudios.com[/URL] . Scheduled maintenance? The plot thickens ...

  4. #4

    Default

    Is this a common move in such cases?
    Fed up for Scalpers? https://www.facebook.com/groups/1710575492567307/?ref=bookmarks

  5. #5
    Scout
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    North Vancouver, BC, Canada
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    6

    Default

    Not sure why you think these guys are leeches. GWs IP has so many holes in it they are filling the gaps.
    GW of course has the right, and the legal obligation, to defend its IP, and their more recent tactic of removing codex entries that do not have models (or models that have been produced by 3rd parties in lieu of GW not making it) is clearly a way to plug the gaps.
    However, producing "daemons" should not be considered an IP infringement. I've not seen the models in question, but the generic nature of "daemon" makes it hard to claim IP.

  6. #6

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by DrLove42 View Post
    Apologies i seem to have misplaced my sypmathy for these opportunist leeches...

    The fact a judge has agrred to a freeze suggests they support GWs side in this case
    There are several "opportunist leeches" out there. Kromlech, for example, makes several models that GW also has models for, and you know that the Kromlech stuff is designed to either supplement or replace GW models. Victorian Miniatures (I believe that's the name?) produce not only alternate models for IG, complete with weapon teams, but even produce weapon packs that are labeled just different enough not to get in trouble, but are distinctly made for use with 40K. That's just two examples. But GW's not going after those guys yet. Kromlech likely has a lot more money than Chapterhouse and wouldn't be as affected (also, the laws in their nation might make it harder for GW to win such a ridiculous legal fight).

    You also likely have no sympathy because you haven't dealt with GW's legal department. These guys will feature a website on the GW website using GW art, but then threaten to sue other sites who use the same art, showing a magnificent display of hypocrisy while also being sue-happy against non-profit websites (back then, we didn't load our sites down with ads). Then there was the situation where they kept changing their mind on whether people had permission to post certain rules that were inaccessible, and the only way you found out it was no longer allowed was a letter on your physical doorstep saying that if you don't remove what they told you that you could have up, they'd sue you.

    Yeah, their legal department is run by a bunch of *******s who jump any opportunity to try to sue and threaten people. They know most of the people they threaten aren't able to pay for a lengthy legal battle.

    Freezing assets doesn't mean the judge supports GW's side. It just means that, until the case is resolved, they don't want to run the risk that someone is making money off of something they shouldn't, so in the meantime, they free the assets. It also prevents anyone from moving assets in the event they might be found in the wrong and ordered to pay something out. A precautionary move, nothing more.

    This crap is getting ridiculous. And for GW, a company that built itself originally from being able to sell everyone else's stuff and write articles about everyone else's games until it could get big enough to start doing their own stuff and eventually focus only on that, to go attacking other people who aren't even taking money away from them... It shows how removed from the customer base the current people running it are.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by doc View Post
    Not sure why you think these guys are leeches. GWs IP has so many holes in it they are filling the gaps.
    GW of course has the right, and the legal obligation, to defend its IP, and their more recent tactic of removing codex entries that do not have models (or models that have been produced by 3rd parties in lieu of GW not making it) is clearly a way to plug the gaps.
    However, producing "daemons" should not be considered an IP infringement. I've not seen the models in question, but the generic nature of "daemon" makes it hard to claim IP.
    I doubt it's the daemons that are the problem. Otherwise, Creature Caster could be in even more trouble, as they're specifically producing models designed to mimic GW's Greater Daemons while looking so much better.

    Seriously, look at these:

    http://www.creaturecaster.com/collections/all

    Now, in this case, someone would be buying those models *instead of* GW models.

    With nearly everything I've seen from Chapterhouse, unless they had something different at some point, I've seen bits that you have to have bought a GW model to attach them to. The exception being the defense lines for various races.

    What's weird is that several companies do that, with the bits. Or even entire replacements. Kromlech's range is chock full of that kind of stuff. The only difference I've seen so far is that CH has made models for stuff GW doesn't have a model for, and made the mistake of admitting that was the purpose. That's it.

    It feels more like they're trying to go after the company least capable of fighting back and trying to use them as an "example" to others. And it's kind of funny (except that they're trying to ruin someone's life), because they know they likely can't even win this case, just bleed the person until he relents, so trying to fight anyone with more means of hiring lawyers and such would just be an insane waste of time and resources.

  7. #7

    Default

    Erik, I agree with you on this. I just wish that rather than focus on legal battles like this, that GW focus more on making and selling more non-limited edition stuff. I mean if you don't buy the data cards for army X then your stuffed unless someone in your group has kindly bought you a box. If it wasn't limited edition and prices were cheaper, GW might actually keep more loyal customers. As it is, I'm getting 3rd party re-casts of FW's MKIV legionnaires. GW need to re-focus on the customer and they might stay on business for longer, you never know....

  8. #8
    Scout
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Morgan Hill, CA
    Posts
    9

    Default

    It's called a court "battle" for a reason.

  9. #9

    Default

    The daemons are not the problem, this case started years ago, and so only involves what happened before that date.

    Chapter House was marketing several products that used names from GW IP, and were marked "for use with WH40k. This is pretty clearly illegal.

    They were also selling a number of products that used visual elements that much up to GW elements. The court decision on this was more mixed, not least because it was hard for GW to prove that they had claim to several elements.

    Other companies were not targeted by GW because they were not engaging in either element of the first practice. Understand that they're is an onus on GW to defend their IP when it is challenged in this way, or else, if later on someone else does the same thing, then they can point to the fact that GW didn't challenge Chapter House, and so no longer have claim over their own IP.

  10. #10

    Angry I had an inverse problem with GW back when i worked for the U.S. offices.

    Quote Originally Posted by goldenS View Post
    Erik, I agree with you on this. I just wish that rather than focus on legal battles like this, that GW focus more on making and selling more non-limited edition stuff. I mean if you don't buy the data cards for army X then your stuffed unless someone in your group has kindly bought you a box. If it wasn't limited edition and prices were cheaper, GW might actually keep more loyal customers. As it is, I'm getting 3rd party re-casts of FW's MKIV legionnaires. GW need to re-focus on the customer and they might stay on business for longer, you never know....
    While working for GW i created a Kyrl Grimblood Wolf Lord figure that looked like the drawing in the codex out of other figures because they had rules but no figure for him. Three months after i showed him around the office including to the visiting English VIPs and explained how I put him together, the exact same directions appeared in Citadel Journal. However, someone else from GW main office. Was taking credit for it. When i complained i was shot down.

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