Company News Bethesda vs Interplay in the court of William M Nickerson

[Davaris]

I'll bet they keep suing till Herve gives up the online option.

You have to be careful who you do business with.

 

[Ausir]

Is it me or were they using The Vault while writing the lawsuit?

Bethesda claims that V13 is a reference to Vault 13, "both the starting location and the the initial working title of the original Fallout game."

From The Vault's V13 FAQ:

What does "V13" stand for?

It likely stands for Vault 13, which was the starting location in the original Fallout. Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure was also the initial working title of what eventually became Fallout.

I knew that the devs were using my wiki, didn't know the legal department did as well.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Sue them for using your public and free resources in order to get material gains without permission :twisted:

 

[FeelTheRads]

Bethesda claims that V13 is a reference to Vault 13,

Wait... but... supposedly Interplay was allowed to develop a Fallout MMORPG. Can't they use Fallout lore for it? That's fucking stupid.

"both the starting location and the the initial working title of the original Fallout game."

And this... It sounds as though Interplay stole the idea from Bethesda. A damn shame to see Interplay stepped on by these weasels.

Fuck you DarkUnderlord.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I love you DarkUnderlord.

I thought that was the filter

 

[Azrael the cat]

Under what IP would they own the content? I'm only familiar with the common law nations, i.e. Australia, UK, Canada, US, Singapore etc, so there might be a different form of IP in the code law nations (continental europe - actually US kind of falls between the two in some ways).

Bethesda bought the rights to all the content of the games from Interplay. They own all the writing, all the art etc. from Fallout 1 and 2 now. To do what you suggest, Interplay would need to write all the dialogues and create new art from scratch. If you think that could be done easily, you have no idea what you're talking about.

The only area where copyright has any real teeth is music - because it protects the exact combinations of notes. But otherwise, if you want to write 'the badly lit tall building', and have the exact same plot as Stephen King's the Dark Tower, then go for it - just make sure you don't copy out any exact passages.

You're wrong. There have been lots of succesful lawsuits based on copying the plot of a work. See e.g. Harlan Ellison's lawsuit against the makers of the Terminator.

Oh don't get me wrong, re ability to sue on art and dialogue assets. If Bethesda owns those from FO1 and FO2 then Interplay are being the morons for not settling (point still stands - if a case goes to court it is because one or both sides are morons and aren't listening to their legal advice). I'd given Interplay the benefit of the doubt in assuming that they kept the art, dialogue and other sub-assets from FO1 and FO2 in order to keep selling those games. If they didn't but were simply licensing the assets from Bethesda, then yes they'd be screwed. But that seems a really odd way of doing business when selling an IP for future games - I thought it was usually either a matter of stopping selling the early ones, as they all get transfered to the new owner, OR the assets from the original games aren't transferred at all, but just the name, and the setting. You could copyright SPECIAL too, as it there is a strong 'form' over substance component in it (not saying it's shallow, just that you can present it quite comprehensively in a written document, hence protecting it through copyright). Again, my assumption was that they hadn't been trasnferred, or at least that some licensing or non-exclusive deal had been done to allow Interplay to keep using them, otherwise they couldn't have sold FO1 and 2 after the sale to Bethesda anyway.

My comments were premised on the idea that only the titling, trademarks, obvious marketing assets (pipboy, 'war never changes' speech, Fallout history) were sold - that was just from my recollection of the reports at the time that Bethesda had bought all the rights to to make future games out of the FO franchise. I didn't recall much info one way or the other about Bethesda buying up assets from the back-catalogue, which is why I asked what IP forms they'd be suing under (as in what type of intellectual property, not just general ownership of content). You're right - copyright on dialogues, characters, and MOST IMPORTANTLY art assets, would screw any sales of FO1,2 - I just thought their continuing sale of FO1 and 2 indicated that that stuff wasnt' sold (and it wouldn;'t have had to be to make a sale of the FO licence effective).

I stand by my claims about the shite-ness of copyright to protect 'ideas' outside of music. There are famous cases where copyright was used successfully to prevent film ripoffs. Terminator was one. Jaws was the most famous one though. But they are almost universally taught as the oddball exceptions to the rule. In both cases the plot was so similar that the judges ruled that it could only have feasibly been produced by copying the wording of the original script and then making strategic adjustments from there. So ok, I was exagerrating when I said you could make a game about the Dwault Veller fighting the Caster and his army of super-genetic-anomolies, finding the oil chip first, before learning of the encroaching genetic-anomoly army. That's pretty much what happened in the Jaws and Terminator cases. But outside of that it's a tough call to successfully sue on copyright for plot, character or setting-theft. In the terminator and Jaws cases, there was even extensive evidence presented regarding the style of writing - sudden changes in writing style appearing, in just the places where it deviated from the original, making it startlingly obvious that someone had copied the original script, and then inserted strategic name-and-place changes in different writing styles to try to dupe people into thinking that they weren't actually stealing the words but just the content. Music, on the other hand, can lead to successful lawsuits for copying as little as 3 notes, (not always, but there have been tons of 3-note-copyright victories, compared to very few plot-theft-victories,..

But yeah, despite my current drunkenness, I don't think I'm actually disagreeing with you on anything much with substance. But I'd love it out of curiousity if someone could lay out, or get tehir hands on an aerly statment, of what the contract was (obviously we can't get the contract itself until it hits court, but a detailed media report from the financial news would be good), and exactly what was transferred over. I can't imagine this being something with enough shades of grey to warrant a costly legal battle- one side or the other is being a douche and the smart money is one bethesda. But an independent summary (i.e. not 'betheda bought all FO stuff', but rather 'Bethesda bought all IP from FO 1 and 2', or just 'bought the FO setting and nothing more' or similar) would be nice for drunken nerd value.

After all, it's 1:15am here and my wife goes to bed at like midnight (sigh). This is the closest thing that sad repressed geek like me can get to arousal these days,,,

 

[Shannow]

Maybe you can find what you are looking for here:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4779

or here:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=5532

Interplay still owns a handful of intellectual properties that Herve might still think he could produce games for. I suspect that he is using the money from the Bethesda license deal to pay off bad debt on the hopes he can get some delusional investor who doesn't know his past and fund another spin-off of the Dark Alliance engine for FO:BOS II, or Dark Alliance III. How many times will be allowed to run a company into bankruptcy before he is stopped?

In regards to a MMORPG, Herve has no clue as to the incredibility deep pockets necessary for the creation of MMORPG. Since he never ever played the games Interplay made, or any other games for that matter, he really doesn't have a decent point of reference other than his own arrogance. The logistics of creating a MMORPG are mind-boggling in scope. A decent recurring billing system, not to mention the security protocols to prevent cheaters, are vast.

Since he has utterly alienated so many former employees, and possible employees (a bad rep is very hard to shake), he will not be able to hire enough help to create the complex code needed for a MMORPG, design the world, and play test balance issues regardless of how much money he gets. The only path to FO:OL is to outsource the whole thing (as an unemployed I.T. worker, I'll refrain from commenting on outsourcing at this time).

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

This is the closest thing that sad repressed geek like me can get to arousal these days,,,

Have you tried pornography?

 

[Morbus]

fuck

:EDIT:
No, wait? Why can't I say fuck for fuck's sake?! What has happened to the codex? Decline and all that.

 

[bobo_monkey]

yes this is all very well and good

yes this is all very well and good with all the conjecture.
None of it is relevant really, all that matters is if there is a nude patch for it.


"NUDUS BUNSUS!"

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Of course, but they won't reach as big of an audience as with new retail releases, GOG and Steam.

They won't reach more than they already did. The only ones who buy through GOG and Steam are pitiful old gamers who just need to have a "legal" version that is absolutely identical, bit to bit, to the "illegal" version. Again what will stop Beth from releasing retail versions instead of Interplay if it brings good money?

I tend to agree with you on most things skyway, but not on this. I buy from GOG because it's an easy, cheap, fast and convenient way to get older games that I know are virus and DRM free and will definately work on my computer. Plus, they have all documentation and extras included in most cases so I don't need to go hunting for them all over the place.

Hell, I buy games from GOG that I already own in hard copy, just so I don't have to go find the disks all the time to play them. :shock:

Digital distribution has it's place. After all, you can still torrents if you want weather it's on available DD or not.