[UPDATE] The Pokémon Company sues fan for Copyright Infringement, demands $4,000 in damages

[BORTZ]

Yeah I saw this on Ars. What an odd think and small amount of money to come down for.

 

[FAST6191]

What a stupid, entitled post. Reddit is somewhere else.

To be fair you are required to defend your trademarks or they risk being genericized. I have still yet to see if this is a trademark issue but that would be the more commonly used/directly applicable law in this case.

 

[Vipera]

To be fair you are required to defend your trademarks or they risk being genericized. I have still yet to see if this is a trademark issue but that would be the more commonly used/directly applicable law in this case.

Argumenting facts is one thing, sending generic insults to the other side of the argument in order to act like "le cool kid" is another. As I said, this isn't Reddit (I hope). Also, as I said, I'm more with TPC than with the guy, mostly because I don't believe he did not make a profit, considering the drinks of his cafè weren't free once you paid for ammission. It's a stupid trick some edgy pubs use in order to trick people by thinking that admission is very low (or even free) and then they hit you with above-average drink prices, because other less edgy pubs would make you pay a big fee with the first/second drink being free and the others to a regular price. I know the trick, so he can't really talk about not making a profit by the admission fee because he would have with drinks and such.

 

[FAST6191]

Though Hells Malice probably could not be said to have a history of diplomatic phrasing I am not seeing the insult there.

In trademark profit or not from misuse has no great bearing on the matter, though damages might be adjusted accordingly -- the law is far more concerned with use.

 

[cooroxd]

This is exactly why I support gateway and rxtools. I even donated to that website that cannot be named

 

[Vipera]

UPDATE!

The filings indicate that the parties might be working toward an out-of-court agreement, but specific amounts (if any) and timing are not set. In other words, Jones’ claim of owing The Pokémon Company $4,000 in 45 days is not accurate. We’ve reached out to him for comment and explanation. We’ll update should we receive a response.

If I had a bit of sympathy for the guy for having been sued instead of a C&D first, I have none now. What a piece of shit. He set the Gofundme page out of lies.

 

[Edgarska]

UPDATE!




If I had a bit of sympathy for the guy for having been sued instead of a C&D first, I have none now. What a piece of shit. He set the Gofundme page out of lies.

Sadly, most people just read the headline and head to forums to spout ignorant rants, it's been clear since the beginning that he wasn't a poor victim of capitalism, he knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[ferofax]

Well, imho 5 party or just one makes no difference. What if someone organise a superhero-themed party (maybe with Batman and Superman on the flyer)? Get sued by DC? Maybe on the legal side they can, but i just find it a nonsense

You probably don't get it, but the real issue here is that this dude is essentially making money off of somebody else's intellectual property.

It's easy to dismiss because it's not your intellectual property that's being misused here. But if you made a character, built a company and video game and merchandise around that character, and then you see other people making money off of the popularity of your character without your express permission, things would be different.

Now if he was making money off of rip-offs instead of your actual characters, then that changes things.

 

[meinhard]

You probably don't get it, but the real issue here is that this dude is essentially making money off of somebody else's intellectual property.

It's easy to dismiss because it's not your intellectual property that's being misused here. But if you made a character, built a company and video game and merchandise around that character, and then you see other people making money off of the popularity of your character without your express permission, things would be different.

Now if he was making money off of rip-offs instead of your actual characters, then that changes things.

Nope, the legal side of the story is really clear. Nintendo had all the rights to sue that guy. Simply i think that a big company get only bad publicity in this kind of situations. With the update the situation is not so clear anymore, so we can't really know the truth, but imho a cease/desist is the perfect way to deal with this "little" infringements of law about intellectual property. I remember some years ago when Metallica took legal actions with some guys that downloaded their album. I just found it ridiculous. Same thing when the Candy Crush company registered the word "Saga" as their copyright and sued other companies for using that word in app names (like Banner Saga, one of best mobile games imho). It's not all black or white, and sure there are many ways to deal with such things. And please guys, a bit of coherence, gbatemp is 80% about playing isos. (Now let's start the flame ) p.s. I hope everyone understand, english is not my native language, by the way

 

[DinohScene]

Really?
Wow... just wow...

 

[weatMod]

lawsuit when?

 

[KingVamp]

Well, if this is true, he possibly made it worse for himself, law and public wise. Still, I'm surprised he didn't get hit with a C/D early on.

 

[VartioArtel]

I wouldn't be shocked if this guy's kept a lot secret.

IE: Got C&Ds for the last X years. But is refusing to reveal this truth to make his case seem more valid and to 'profit' off the ignorant masses.

I mean we got proof he lied about the time limit to pay up
We know he's trying to blow this out of the water and create more drama to gain public sympathy
And we know that for all legal purposes TPC is indeed in the right.