Intellectual Property Rights

[Rayn]

I was wondering what the JREFers felt about intellectual property rights. With the frivolous law suit that FOX had against Al Franken, and the White Wolf lawsuit (http://www.geeklife.com/files/whitewolf.complaint.pdf ) against Sony for its Underworld movie.

What is your position on this? When is intellectual property that of the individual and when is it part of the public domain? Where do we draw the line on the issue? What are the legal ramifications?

Thanks for any input all.

P.S. Not sure where this post belongs, but I'll place it here.

[Peter Jenkins]

I tried to read the lawsuit details, but, to be honest, Vampyres and Werewolves are not my cup of tea.

Intellectual property rights are avery important. Ideas can be very valuable. If my ideas are taken up by a large corporation and used to create profits, I would hope to have a fair share. Sometimes its very difficult to distinguish between plagiarism inspiration and coincidence. When someone feels that there is a line to be drawn between them, its a case for arbitration or the law.

Peter

[Cinorjer]

Intellectual property rights are important, but like anything else, it can be abused. Scientology, for one, uses the threat of copyright lawsuits to get any website opposed to their practices banned from the associated servers or search engines.

In this case you linked to, the complaint seems to be that the role playing game publisher claims copyright to an idea or concept: that of a secret world of vampires that seeks to keep their existance hidden from normal society. It seems frivilous on the surface, since ideas can't be copyrighted. Ann Rice could just as well sue the role playing game publisher, since her books involve the same idea of a hidden world of vampires.

As a (hopefully) published writer of fantasy novels one day, I would object to copies of my books being traded for free over the internet, since I don't get any money that way. But these lawsuits seem to be more and more common, where people claim the right to common catchphrases, names, and plots. I don't think any of them ever get anywhere.

[WanderingKnight]

White Wolf isn't claiming to have invented Vampires and werewolves, but is rather pointing out that the movie Underworld has some 61 points of similarity with both the general setting they created for the game, aka "The World of Darkness" and a specific novel set in that world, Love of Monsters

Now, some of the points they bring up include the fact that WoD vampires differ from more traditional depictions. For example, WoD vampires are visible in mirrors, as are the ones in Underwolrd

SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD

As for the plotlines... Love of Monsters is about a vampire and a werewolf, whose peoples are sworn enemies, who fall in love and produce a half-vamp/half wolf offspring which the two groups call "Abomination."

Underworld is about a vampire and a werewolf, whose peoples are sworn enemies, who fall in love and produce a half-vamp/half wolf offspring which the two groups call "Abomination."

Click here for a post on slashdot.org that lists the 61 points of similarity (http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77622&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=123&tid=188&tid=97&tid=99&mode=thread&cid=6899974)

Click here for a pdf of the original complaint filed by White Wolf (http://homepages.cquest.utoronto.ca/~cks/whitewolf.complaint.pdf)

I'm all for griping about companied bringing forth frivlous intellectual property lawsuits. But I don't think this is one of them.

[Rayn]

WanderingKnight said: ...the movie Underworld has some 61 points of similarity with both the general setting they created for the game, aka "The World of Darkness" and a specific novel set in that world, Love of Monsters...

I suppose my question is where the line should be drawn in such a case. How does one determine when an idea has been sufficiently ripped off to warrant compensation? Is there a certain number of points that must be identical to justify litigation? What about Franken's case and FOX. It was obviously frivolous, but is there ever a point where a phrase can be copyrighted?

Link to FOX Dropping Franken Lawsuit (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E7DA1339F935A1575BC0A9659C8B 63) (free registration necessary)

Just wondering what people's thoughts are on that subject. Why do you perceive this particular case to be legitamate WK? What would make you change your mind?

[Cinorjer]

As for the plotlines... Love of Monsters is about a vampire and a werewolf, whose peoples are sworn enemies, who fall in love and produce a half-vamp/half wolf offspring which the two groups call "Abomination."

Underworld is about a vampire and a werewolf, whose peoples are sworn enemies, who fall in love and produce a half-vamp/half wolf offspring which the two groups call "Abomination."

I suppose a case can be made for plagerism in this case, although the "61 points" argument fails to sway me. Most of those are elements that aren't unique to any one vampire story, and in particular it begins to seem the role playing company ripped off Ann Rice quite a bit. So the elder vampires are in charge, and radiate power? That's two of the points. I'll bet if you took the Spiderman and Daredevil movie and tried hard enough, you could find 61 points in common.

But at some stage, you do have to say that there are enough unique elements in common that the writers of the movie must have taken the novel and copied it into a movie without permission. It will be an interesting court case.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Originally posted by WanderingKnight
White Wolf isn't claiming to have invented Vampires and werewolves, but is rather pointing out that the movie Underworld has some 61 points of similarity with both the general setting they created for the game, aka "The World of Darkness" and a specific novel set in that world, Love of Monsters


Then again, some of those 61 points are silly or self-contradictory. It's kind of hard to claim both "Vampires and werewolves scratch and bite each other - similarity!" and "Vampires and werewolves shoot guns at each other - similarity!". I guess WW thinks they have IP rights on everything other than vampires and werewolves fighting with wifflebats.


Now, some of the points they bring up include the fact that WoD vampires differ from more traditional depictions. For example, WoD vampires are visible in mirrors, as are the ones in Underwolrd


That's what they'd love you to think, but that particular point is completely dishonest in my humble opinion.

Some WoD vampires are invisible in mirrors. Just not all of them.

Whereas the movie makers are on record as saying that they went with a pseudoscientific vampire conceit, which precludes a failure to reflect. The rest of their vampire treatment is consistent with this.


SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD

As for the plotlines... Love of Monsters is about a vampire and a werewolf, whose peoples are sworn enemies, who fall in love and produce a half-vamp/half wolf offspring which the two groups call "Abomination."


Someone on the rec.games.frp.dnd newsgroup dug up a comic book from the 1950s that featured a vampire and a werewolf having a kid, as well as a variety of later publications of the idea. Plus it wasn't an original WW idea as far as I know - their fans wanted rules for vamp/wolf critters, and WW released material covering them in response to demand. I don't personally think they have any moral right to exclusive use of the concept.


I'm all for griping about companied bringing forth frivlous intellectual property lawsuits. But I don't think this is one of them. [/B]

I'm ambivalent. Some of their points are stupid or flat-out dishonest. Others look suspicious. Then again there are a lot of vampire books out there in the world - could any of us come up with a plot for a Hollywood "vampire vs werewolf" flick that didn't have sixty points of similarity with something that's been published some time in the last fifty years?

I too will follow it with interest.

[gnome]

Most of White Wolf's vampire/werewolf mythos is cobbled together from existing styles and legends of vampire and werewolf tales. I do not anticipate the movie makers having trouble refuting this lawsuit, as they can claim to simply be a derivitave work from the same original sources, and they seem to have avoided using any White-wolf trademarked terms.

[LW]

Originally posted by WanderingKnight


Now, some of the points they bring up include the fact that WoD vampires differ from more traditional depictions.

Well, to be precise, at least 99% of modern (= Stoker and post-Stoker) vampire stories differ from the traditional descriptions.

Some time ago I managed to find really interesting book. Eläviä kuolleita (= "Living Dead") by Pekka Kilpeläinen. It contains translations of four or five original 18th century reports on vampirism. Just about the only thing common with those stories and modern depictions is that vampirism spreads and that vampires are staked. (Though, the original purpose of staking was to prevent the vampire from raising from grave.)

[DrMatt]

In recent months I've seen people paint all criticism of certain ideas as treason--but I've also seen people paint e.g. all musicians as misers.

The arguments usually go like this: Big Corporation X unfairly exploits e.g. both musicians and their fans, therefore fans should fileshare all music whether Big Corporation X is involved or not.
On the other hand, Satirist Y is not entitled to an opinion because it makes fun of quotes from Target W and every word uttered by W is sacred.

Both of these "arguments" involve, at the least, the Fallacy of Composition.

[Rayn]

Originally posted by DrMatt
In recent months I've seen people paint all criticism of certain ideas as treason--but I've also seen people paint e.g. all musicians as misers.

The arguments usually go like this: Big Corporation X unfairly exploits e.g. both musicians and their fans, therefore fans should fileshare all music whether Big Corporation X is involved or not.
On the other hand, Satirist Y is not entitled to an opinion because it makes fun of quotes from Target W and every word uttered by W is sacred.

Both of these "arguments" involve, at the least, the Fallacy of Composition.

I don't exactly see how the two relate (I'm slow). Care to elaborate?

[Temporal Renegade]

Elric is sometimes referred to as The White Wolf;
but, if Michael Moorcock tried to sue the gaming company, there's no telling what type of song & dance they'd try out...

[DrMatt]

Originally posted by Rayn


I don't exactly see how the two relate (I'm slow). Care to elaborate?

The first is filesharing vs copyright; the second is democratic speech vs Bush. Both are cases where somebody feels very strongly about a red herring and makes a blanket statement denigrating an unrelated right--the rights of creative folks to own their labor, on the one hand, and the rights of critics to voice their opinions on the other.

It seems that such knuckleheadedness is hard-wired into the human animal at some level, but we can overcome it.:rolleyes: