Spring RTS Engine

<shrugs> I suppose that if that becomes a priority, then I'll have to mess with YouTube's terms, to ensure good results. Currently, the search term "pure" just brings up a lot of junk, tbh.

Argh wrote:Doesn't matter. Different genre, and copyright law on that topic is quite well-defined, I'm perfectly legal and safe from them, should they decide to bother me.

Nope, same market (videogames). Trademarks (not copyright!) aren't that narrow. The standard here is "potentially confusing to the customer".

Moreover, it's an acronym- the full title is "Purify. Unify. Reclaim. Exterminate.".

Doesn't matter, the racing game has the word in allcaps, you have it in allcaps, the most noticeable part of your game's name is identical to theirs.

Might not invite a lawsuit since they probably don't care about some niche mod for a niche engine but you'd risk getting your uploads killed with DMCA takedowns if they just look for the name. Sure, you can file the counternotice but I'm not sure how easy that is.

Nope. Looked into that. It's been tried, and I'd win in court. Non-competing genres are not the same "market".

Nor is the DCMA thing a big worry, either- I'd be up again in 24 hours or less, tbh., and then they'd have to sue (and lose, at the preliminary stage) before they could do anything further.

So I could release a game called "Super Mario Bros." as long as it's not in a genre Mario has appeared in? Somehow I doubt any court would buy that. RTS and racing are competing genres because they compete for the same pool of money. What precedence case established that different videogame genres don't count as the same market?

The only thing I can find with Google is a lawsuit from some "Buzztime Inc" against Sony for using the Buzz name for that quiz game.

KDR_11k wrote:So I could release a game called "Super Mario Bros." as long as it's not in a genre Mario has appeared in? Somehow I doubt any court would buy that. RTS and racing are competing genres because they compete for the same pool of money. What precedence case established that different videogame genres don't count as the same market?

The only thing I can find with Google is a lawsuit from some "Buzztime Inc" against Sony for using the Buzz name for that quiz game.

Yes, but "Super Mario Bros." is a trademark and well-known title that's been around for decades. "Pure" is just a word, and we probably started up if not first than at more or less the same time.

doubtful gmn most games take years to develop. Thing is GMN what I was saying is that SUPERMARIOBROTHERS and super mario brothers ARE the same to google, players and most regretably, lawyers etc.

While PURE is a word, the company that created the pure game likely has legal proof of title trademark etc. Odds are the title ownership would go to them in any case.

I didn't mean to start a storm here but it is something to ready yourself for. From what I have learned in my time at work(while limited I spent a week learning corporate license stances, trademarks branding etc. While a week might not seem like a lot of time, the company I work for has this massive learning library and believe me, CAPITOLIZATION can cause someone to get zinged by a managing director if it goes to the client.

I do not really want to see arghs project suffer any misguided C&D. I am not sure how bad Disney is.

Oh, trust me, Disney is BAD on the copyright front. Or they were when Disney himself was still alive and kicking - dunno about now.

I understand your concern and thanks for the warning.

After all, it's not like we can't just change the name. Equally, while Disney are bad on the copyright front, since this is more coincidence, they'd probably (well, hopefully) only request that we change it before trying to shut us down. PURE is a backronym anyway, it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a new one.

well, I just wanted to pop in and point that concern out. Argh, I am out of your thread again.

-Smoth out.

Oh, they'd send a DCMA takedown request and then a C&D to me, I'm sure.

I would send them packing. I have read of cases involving this sort of thing, and we would be fine. I appreciate your concern on this matter, but I am not in the least worried about it, tbh.

You better have a huge legal defense fund then, big companies (especially ones like Disney) tend to simply prolong the lawsuit until you go bankrupt, then they win.

Hmm, I wonder how quickly baawing to the media about how gigacorp Disney is picking on a little indie game developer would get them to back off...

Yes, I'm not losing a lot of sleep about this. I'd win at the preliminary hearings, frankly. They wouldn't have a chance in hell of dragging things out, either. The judge would dismiss the case (judges love summary judgments, saves them time), and that would be all she wrote.

Not that they'd bother. That's a lot of money, to squish a little-guy project, frankly.

Now, they might annoy me with a DCMA takedown request, sure. That's a practically free form of harassment, after all, and they have companies like Web Sheriff out there, being "helpful" about such things.

But, while that would be obnoxious, it wouldn't be the end of the world. DCMA takedown requests wouldn't take down my whole 'site, after all. Just the game file.

A DCMA takedown request wouldn't keep me down for more than two weeks, however, as I would be happy to counter-challenge such an act, and ask them to meet me in court (as well as screaming my head off to any media outlet that would take a moment to listen).

In short, I'm not exactly worried about this. Nor am I worried about the use of the word, "overmind", either, in case anybody feels like telling me what Blizzard (won't bother) doing. Google "overmind", you'll see why- it's not exactly a proprietary name that Blizzard came up with in some illusionary moment of pure coolness. And you don't see Marvel suing Blizzard over using that term, either.

It's like if I named a unit the "ice princess"... that doesn't open me up to lawsuits from every would-be writer who thought this was a good way to describe the heroine's arch-rival for the love of Prince Quisling

Seriously, people. Copyright law does not give people a lot of power, unless:

A. You really are just ripping off other people's stuff.
B. They can prove that.
C. They can not only prove that, but prove damages have occurred.

Under U.S. law, for a civil suit to proceed to a successful penalty phase, the plaintiffs must establish that actual harm has occurred- lost sales, damaged reputation, etc. You can't posit theoretical harm, you can't whine about how it's simply "unfair", etc.

What huge media companies like Disney typically do is to get an injunction that keeps the files out of circulation while waiting for a court date. But they wouldn't even get that far, frankly.

While we should all respect copyright law... it's not a magic wand.

We all know that infringing game projects have been squashed over and over and over again. Yes, that's true. But they were very deliberately and consciously infringing, and would have lost in court. I'm not afraid of spending time in court over this stuff, frankly. Nobody will bother.

KingRaptor wrote:Hmm, I wonder how quickly baawing to the media about how gigacorp Disney is picking on a little indie game developer would get them to back off...

This. Is. DISNEY! They're already famous for crushing small people and ripping others off, what do they have to lose?


Also one aspect of trademark law is that if you don't defend it you lose it. People mistakenly attribute that to copyright law but it applies only to trademarks. I do NOT buy it that trademarks are so limited that a different videogame genre already clears you. That'd be like calling your orange juice Coca-Cola.

Google "Pure Game" and you get nothing but that ATV thing. Argh's name has become ungoogleable.

Meh, I wasn't showing up in the "charts" before, either. I have not even talked to any media outlets, etc. about this project, etc.

Wrote a new team-color display Widget from scratch. Personally, other than maybe tweaking the level of color, I think this is a big improvement over everything else that's out there:

You know what, i fucking love it, that picture makes PURE look so beautiful.

Awesome work dude!

That is a beautiful picture. So will all units always glow like that, or is it just when you select them?

So will all units always glow like that, or is it just when you select them?

1. It's a Widget, so you can turn it off.

2. I'll do an alternate version, where it'll glow only if selected. Trivial to do. I think that I like this version best, so it'll be the default- I welcome feedback about this, though, if people would rather that the "selected only" was the default version of this.

3. In the current version, if they are selected, the glow changes color, to clearly indicate the status. None of these are selected. I'm using an off-white to show selection status, with an inverse for people whose teamcolors are close to white.

Well if it was only when selected, you wouldn't know which units were yours :) So this is better. Looks cool too, having constantly glowing units sounds a bit wierd in theory but I reckon this would look quite nice and be very practical once you got used to it.