Hmm... copyright is 76 years beyond creator's death. Patents (most) have 20 year protection, though exceptions exist. Trademark (if in use and the 10-year notice is filed) is forever.

Yeah, trademark already serves the purpose of protecting profits. Even if Harry Potter became public domain right now, the trademarks would still be in effect and prevent others from advertising their products as Harry Potter.

This is why Disney doesn't do anything more with Tarzan despite it being public domain. The trademark is still used by the Burroughs estate, which they have been rigorously maintaining by releasing new editions and licensing merchandise.

Copyrights are so long that they actually seem to be actively harmful instead. The Wizard of Oz stories have been public domain for a while, but nobody has really done anything with it. You could easily adapt it to a children's cartoon but we haven't seen any.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 17, 2022, 11:33:29 AM
NuTSR doesn't have the copyright, so the trademark is worthless.

This statement doesn't make any sense. If nuTSR has the StarFrontier trademark, they could write a new book with that trademark, and it would have tacit affiliation with every other SF book out there. NuTSR would then own the copyright to that book they produced, even if they don't own the copyright to the other books.

Now, if I'm being charitable, what I THINK you mean is that nuTSR has the rights to the "StarFrontier" name, but not the IP in it's entirety. That may be possible, but that's still just a trademark issue. Nothing to do with copyright, which only protects specific products from unlawful reproduction.

Quote from: Osman Gazi on September 16, 2022, 09:25:28 AM

Quote from: Omega on September 16, 2022, 08:50:12 AM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on September 15, 2022, 12:49:00 PM
I don't have a copy of Star Frontiers in front of me to cross reference.  That seems highly skeptical that old TSR would go down the race route back in the day.  Seems rather odd choice. 

I have the original TSR SF AND the original playtest materials. Theres no such thing in the book. Any claims that the original SF was in any way Wacist is a flat out lie. But then thats all these cultists do is lie. Even when they tell the truth they have to somehow lie.

By "original playtest materials" do you mean original when Star Frontiers first came out, or nuTSR's playtest materials?  And if it's nuTSR's playtest materials, is it the same materials covered in this video (referenced above)?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD9evesvAos

I said TSR not nuTSR. So yes the real Star Frontiers. Not this fake thing they are trying to pass off. A friend claims to have seen excerps from the early nuSF and claims it had alot of racist comments in it. But I have not seen such things myself so must take that with several grains of salt.

But seeing just the few posted excerps here and elsewhere it would surprise me none at all. The notSF writer comes across as a creep.

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 16, 2022, 01:56:26 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 16, 2022, 09:22:12 AM
I'm curious why WotC doesn't try to revive d20 Modern so they can revive all their TSR IPs that don't fit strictly into the fantasy genre.

Now that you  mention it, I'm surprised they didn't convert all these games to d20 Modern back in the 3.5 era.

They half-assed did.
White Wolf was outsourced to do the Gamma World books for d20m. Its a complete mess. Just call it Nano World and move on.
WOTC put out a series of d20m books and one was D20 Space or Sci-Fi. Not sure now. But that had a really half assed nod to Star Frontiers in it that was mostly a few name drops and not much else. Pretty sure was a IP nailing move. Use it or lose it.
White Wolf again was outsourced for the Masque of the Red Death d20m book. Not a bad book either. Though it ramps up the horror prevalence way too much in my opinion.

Those are the ones I recall.

Quote from: FingerRod on September 16, 2022, 03:29:16 PM

Quote from: Osman Gazi on September 16, 2022, 09:25:28 AM

Quote from: Omega on September 16, 2022, 08:50:12 AM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on September 15, 2022, 12:49:00 PM
I don't have a copy of Star Frontiers in front of me to cross reference.  That seems highly skeptical that old TSR would go down the race route back in the day.  Seems rather odd choice. 

I have the original TSR SF AND the original playtest materials. Theres no such thing in the book. Any claims that the original SF was in any way Wacist is a flat out lie. But then thats all these cultists do is lie. Even when they tell the truth they have to somehow lie.

By "original playtest materials" do you mean original when Star Frontiers first came out, or nuTSR's playtest materials?  And if it's nuTSR's playtest materials, is it the same materials covered in this video (referenced above)?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD9evesvAos

Interested in the answer to this too. I'm assuming Omega was referring to the original works based on the fact legal documents attacking the recent work are referenced. But if those excerpts were not in the new play test materials then something odd is going on.

Regardless, whomever wrote what was referenced in your original post created objectively racist content. And while I get it that the danger hairs cry wolf over everything, we only keep the high ground if we can actually recognize a wolf when we see it. I believe you did a good job making that point.

Real Star Frontiers, not this fakeStar Frontiers.

I agree that the red flags on this one are for once not the usual cry wolf tactics of the SJWs. Even the little I've seen paints a rather bleak opinion of this so-called designer.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 16, 2022, 04:02:58 PM
Not a lawyer either but:

Given the first ammendment how could WotC win such lawsuit?

They don't own the TSR or Starfrontiers brands, isn't the owner to those rights able to publish whatever he wants?

Apparently they think they do own the rights to Star Frontiers as they a year or two ago ordered the Starfrontiersman magazine to remove some things from their magazine. They also were putting the axe to one or two other SF fangroups that had prior agreements.

So either they are telling a lie that they have the rights and can enforce it. Or they do have the rights and can enforce it. It is WOTC so either could be true.

Quote from: Omega on September 18, 2022, 04:57:22 AM
So either they are telling a lie that they have the rights and can enforce it. Or they do have the rights and can enforce it. It is WOTC so either could be true.

My bet would be on "we have lawyers and money and you don't so who actually owns the rights is irrelevant."

The question with these things is never "are you in the right?"; it's "at a minimum of $250/hour how long can you afford to hold out against what they say is right?"

Does nobody here understand how copyright and trademark work?

WotC owns the copyright to the Star Frontiers IP. NuTSR does not. Even if NuTSR has the trademark, they cannot produce books using the original IP. They could only legally create an original IP that just uses the same name.

You see something similar with Sasquatch's Alternity game. Altho it's a loose retroclone of Alternity, it can't legally use any of the original IP like the Star*Drive or Dark•Matter settings. Ergo, it's a worthless ripoff that pisses off reviewers on DriveThruRPG.

Another example is Dragonstar. There's a Dragonstar RPG that's basically Spelljammer but with scifi tech instead of magitech (or proto-Starfinder, I guess). There's a Dragonstar comic book about intelligent dinosaurs rescued before the asteroid by aliens then returned to Earth millions of years later. These two Dragonstars are unrelated.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 18, 2022, 03:23:30 PM
Does nobody here understand how copyright and trademark work?

Do you?

QuoteWotC owns the copyright to the Star Frontiers IP. NuTSR does not. Even if NuTSR has the trademark, they cannot produce books using the original IP. They could only legally create an original IP that just uses the same name.

I said as much in my previous post.

QuoteYou see something similar with Sasquatch's Alternity game. Altho it's a loose retroclone of Alternity, it can't legally use any of the original IP like the Star*Drive or Dark•Matter settings. Ergo, it's a worthless ripoff that pisses off reviewers on DriveThruRPG.

But those are still TRADEMARK issues. Copyright protects the integrity of the whole body of work. If Sasquatch made a complete copy of the StarDrive or DarkMatter settings, but just changed all the names, they'd be free of trademark violations but would still run foul of copyright. However, courts have ruled that if enough changes are made so that the products are "similar" but not "exact," then no copyright infringement takes place. This is how FASA got away with completely ripping off R.Talsorian Cyberpunk.

This site does a good job explaining it.

Quote from: Jaeger on September 16, 2022, 08:09:21 PM

Quote from: jhkim on September 16, 2022, 05:29:59 PM
From the suit, Wizards claims that they do own "TSR" and "Star Frontiers" as pre-existing common-law trademarks, and that LaNasa's federal registration of those as its trademarks is invalid. As with others - I am not a lawyer - but it seems common law trademarks exist simply from usage and don't need to be registered.

I just happened to stay at a Holiday in Express last night...

Common law trademarks have geographical restrictions. They're basically meant to make it so that I cannot just open a new restaurant with the same name as a popular local one in the next town over hoping to take advantage of name recognition. They do not give the same level of rights as a federally registered trademark. A common law trademark will not protect that same local restaurant if I opened one with the same name the next state over.

WotC is trying to muddy the waters with all the defamation/racism idiocy in true lawfare style, IMHO it's interesting that they are relying on the  their Common law trademark from Washington state when NuTSR is in Wisconsin, and NuTSR has the federal registration for the marks. But their state level Common Law claim supersedes the Federally registered Trademarks, because still selling out of print PDF's & POD's...??
..
IMHO - It's all to bury them in legal fees to get them to come to the table and cede the trademarks back.

My impression is that the geographic restriction is a historical precedent from times when advertising was primarily local. The *intent* of trademark is precisely to prevent deceptive marketing, where people think they're buying from one producer and instead are buying from another. Historically, if "Sue's Diner" was in New York, then someone isn't allowed to open another "Sue's Diner" down the street because customers might drawn to the other one based on advertising or word of mouth from the original. However, if someone opened a "Sue's Diner" in Texas, no one would think they're the same.

You mention "Holiday Inn Express" - but that is a subsidiary of Holiday Inn that shares the same trademark. It's not a deceptive move by a third party to bank on the success of Holiday Inn.

Regarding geography, advertising has changed in the age of the Internet, and I'd be curious if precedent has been revised. It used to be that a tiny company like LaNasa's TSR would only reach a small local area. Now they still have extremely small reach of certain market segment, but it's widely geographically dispersed.

It seems to me that in this case, WotC has a point. The "Star Frontiers" trademark was registered purely to be deceptive - to try to piggyback on the original Star Frontiers RPG that LaNasa has no rights to. That deception is the only reason LaNasa's TSR is getting any attention at all.

Quote from: Effete on September 18, 2022, 03:58:16 PM
However, courts have ruled that if enough changes are made so that the products are "similar" but not "exact," then no copyright infringement takes place. This is how FASA got away with completely ripping off R.Talsorian Cyberpunk.

Wut?

Frontier Space is the new fanmade version of Star Frontiers that is better than the original anyhow and readily/easily available for good prices.

Quote from: Batjon on September 18, 2022, 08:24:29 PM
Frontier Space is the new fanmade version of Star Frontiers that is better than the original anyhow and readily/easily available for good prices.

I'll have to check that out. Unfortunately the alien options seem too sparse. One of the best parts of TSR's scifi games like Star Frontiers, Galactos Barrier, and Star*Drive was their diverse roster of aliens.

I'm disappointed. I haven't found anything that compares to d20 Future tho (besides GURPS, I guess, but omg that's still intimidating af). Altho the chapter on campaign settings is too short to be very useful, it's the only game I can find that covers the entire genre like a scifi counterpart of D&D. It has rules for mechs, psi, mutations (useful not just for post-apocalyptic settings but also biopunk), robots, moreaus, aliens, cyborgs, and more that can be mixed and matched. Every other game I could find is always married to a specific setting, and none of the settings I can find really suit my interest.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 18, 2022, 09:11:15 PM
I'll have to check that out. Unfortunately the alien options seem too sparse. One of the best parts of TSR's scifi games like Star Frontiers, Galactos Barrier, and Star*Drive was their diverse roster of aliens.

Someone should crowdsource an Alien Bestiary Petty Gods style.