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I am writing to you on behalf of The I.A.V. Dortmunder and its related entities (hereinafter collectively referred to as "The Alliance"). The Alliance is the exclusive owner of copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in and to the television series, including to the games based on the Series.

We have recently become aware that your game which uses trademarks, characters, images, designs, slogans and/or other distinctive creative elements of the series.

Your use of various trademarks, characters, images, designs, slogans and/or other distinctive creative elements of the Series in the Infringing Game is likely to cause consumers to believe that The Alliance are all manner of stupid. Accordingly, the Infringing Game violates our trademark rights and constitutes unfair competition under the Whatever Act.

Further, your use of Our copyright images and episodes from the series constitutes copyright infringement under Alliance law, and entitles The Alliance to recover its actual damages, statutory damages up to 150,000 credits per copyright infringed, your profits, our attorney's fees, and court costs.

We, therefore, demand that you immediately:

1. Cease all display or dissemination of the Infringing Game..please.

2. Cease all use of any characters, images, designs and/or other distinctive creative elements of the Series in any manner whatsoever, and,

3. Confirm in writing to the undersigned no later than now, that you support unification.

Should you fail to comply with the above demands, we will consider sending an Operative with a fleet of highly trained Alliance FEDs and crush your balls into an oblivion.

This letter is without prejudice to our rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved.

Very truly yours,

Commander Harken

The I.A.V. Dortmunder

Oh, Have A Nice Day!!!

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Originally posted by CortexOverride:
Should you fail to comply with the above demands, we will consider sending an Operative with a fleet of highly trained Alliance FEDs and crush your balls into an oblivion.

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Originally posted by whozit:
There is already a role playing game, "Infringing Game". I gotta go with the evil FOX on this one.

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Originally posted by thevoiceinmyhead:
Has everyone forgotten when FOX went after the people that were making t-shirts and stuff a few years back, because they found out that they could make a dollar off of something that they had let drop and not bothered with it? or is everyone too new to remember?

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Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property and that "...interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright... 'an infringer of the copyright.'" In the case of copyright infringement the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law is invaded, i.e. exclusive rights, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.

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Sorry,"leafonthewind.ajjegames.com" does not exist or is not available.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Your analogy to piracy works if it's the handbook that was posted, but I don't think that's the case because Fox didn't publish the handbook. While your initial assessment of the motivations of the trademark lawyers is probably correct, there's still something we're missing that provides the legal basis for their action.

A non-profit magazine writing an article still has to request use of stills from the parent company. Why? Answer this, and we'll know why legal action was brought against the website.

As for the law itself, it's weird, since my mind does not equate a still to the entirety of a work itself, and it seems even stranger if no money is exchanged. Comparing to your piracy analogy, that would be like quoting from a paragraph of a published work (since about a paragraph of a shooting script is, at most, what a screenshot would compromise). Yet I'm relatively sure you can quote parts of a work without facing legal action, so long as you make clear you are not the author of the work. Piracy would be getting the whole thing from a source that is not the parent company.

Now a logo, I could understand that, as it can be considered representative of the entirety of a work.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Hmm. I guess a magazine writing an article has to request use of stills from the parent company.

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Originally posted by Storymark:
It's amazing.... people don't read.

As explained above, if they don't pursue it, it endangers their legal position on other copyrights. Just the way it is.

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Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:

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Originally posted by thevoiceinmyhead:
there was much more to it than that, and a number of people were affected

Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"

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Oh, I remember this. Many of us got letters and threats, but it was 11th Hour who really got assaulted. Ultimately it all worked out, but I have to agree with most people who wonder "YTF does FOX even care now?" I mean, at some point it becomes part of our culture (I guess legally they still retain the rights). But I guess they are bored since most of the programming on that network is crap anyway. I think they are still just bitter that they tried to destroy something special, and it refuses to die.

We're too damn pretty to die. Sorry to disappoint you FOX.

TCM

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