Red Tape the guild is not a copyright infringement

[Zarrot]

Cool, I can start making money by copy-writing names for things in an imaginary world. Is Virral getting royalties everytime someone uses the egg named after her?

Some people are just fn insane. LOL

[Mysticknight]

I was in a guild that named itself Gangrel over in DAOC.
the name Gangrel was copywrited by a game company, and as such the guild was forced to change the name.
Unless he copywrote the name he should bugger off.

[______________Kaiyne]

Can you get any worse than that? LoL It's pretty sad

[___________Yorkforce]

Oh dear .. I had a guild called *The Monarchy* and i live in the uk .. im screwed!

[_____________Tenzian]

hehehe

Barratry's nearly always amusing.

Red Tape is an accepted phrase in the English language and so its use cannot be copyrighted. Trademarked yeah, but its use in itself doesn't imply or infer any rights of copyright.

Your barratrous friend needs to learn what he's talking about, as I suspect he hasn't gone to the trouble of registering a trademark :P

[_______________Nauls]

Was this extortion?

Since he is possibly posting from another state than your BBS, is this also a violation of the Mann Act, or does that only pertain to prostitution?

If he thought this up with someone else, is it considered a conspiracy as defined in the Rico statutes?

I'm sure the FBI has time to look into this, there is nothing else going on these days.

[Nrse]

I thought the stuff he was saying was halerious I had a good, laugh. I was curious to see how wrong this guy was so I asked my g/f about it. (she is a Lawyer who graduated from Georgetown with a LLM wich is a masters in Law) I ran it buy her, she took a look at it and laughed. Said that if anything the names belonged to FC and that he needs to check the EULA. FC ownes all the intellevtual property concerning the game, which is whythird party software is given away and not sold. Just my two cents

[______________Takhai]

Well I was called Pollux back on Shooting games.. and I copyrighted it and all.. I shall sue FC for not letting me have it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

=P How retarded ..was funny though

[_________Crazynotion]

That earns my prize for 'innovative yet fundamentally flawed scam of the month'

For any who don't know, copyright is a rather interesting thing. You don't actually register copyright - all you need to do is put the (C) symbol with the date and identity of the copyright holder on your work, and its yours. Any media or artistic work can be copyrighted, thus I can copyright my story, my painting, my sculpture, my movie or my computer game under the same law. And it is binding in any country that recognises copyright (which is quite a lot of countries).

The onus is, however, on the copyright holder to prove that a copyright has been invalidated. Thus, the legal fees are theirs to pay and, unless they stand to lose a LOT of money over it, then it really isn't worthwhile. It falls to the court.

But you can't copyright a common phrase. You can trademark it, but you can't copyright it. And if he had indeed trademarked Red Tape then you'd be in a lot of trouble. But he'd also be able to produce the appropriate documents. And his trademark would have to be valid.

The fact that he was claiming ownership of something that was a subset of AO (a guild within AO) is a rather severe violation of FunCom's intellectual rights. Now that is serious, since their intellectual rights are their core business.

Willforce - your guild 'Gangrel' is not violation of White Wolf's copyright. It's an english word, not one they made up. It's an obscure-as-heck english word, but a word nonetheless. If you were claiming to be a bunch of animalistic vampires who formed a clan within a vampire hierarchy called Gangrel, then you'd be breaching their copyright. The only reason you'd have to change it is if they have Trademarked 'Gangrel' - which they may well have?
Changing your name in respect of their intellectual property is, when no trademark is in place, simply called 'courtesy'. I hope they sent you a thankyou.

[LTK]

You don't actually register copyright - all you need to do is put the (C) symbol with the date and identity of the copyright holder on your work, and its yours.

While I agree with the rest of your post, I just had to jump in and play a bit of devil's advocate. That's not entirely accurate.

You are allowed to place the (C) Copyright symbol on your work to validate it as copyrighted, but it is also unprovable and won't hold it's weight in court unless you have some way to prove that you wrote the work "before" the offending party (other than the date you wrote in next the (C) symbol, of course).

Hence, You DO and CAN actually register a copyright. And, for all p's and q's to be covered, anyone with a private work that they wish to make public should definitely go out right away and register the copyright.

Also, a quick method to do this (and you don't even have to leave your house for this one) is to mail yourself a copy of the copyrighted document in a sealed enveloped. Once it's processed, re-stamped and delivered back to your house, stash it in a safe place. You now have postal-provable dated copy of your work.