ZeniMax threatening DoomRL [armchair lawyering ITT]

To make it short: None of those mods uses this as their official logo:

https://doom.chaosforge.org/images/19.png

That alone is more than enough to bring out the lawyers. That logo, more than anything else they complained about is an identifying mark of their original game and nobody working in the business can afford to let it pass. If one person misappropriates that logo and they know about it and don't try to stop it they run the risk of losing their trademark.

It may just be that they got pointed to that website in some other legal issue where someone tried to use it as precedent. Now, to cover their ass, they can pretend to not have known before, but now that they do know, they have to act or are in some legal shit elsewhere.

Of course we do not know what really happened but that legal business really can be a minefieled where people have to do shitty things to avoid being outsmarted by even shittier people.

Graf Zahl said:

To make it short: None of those mods uses this as their official logo:

https://doom.chaosforge.org/images/19.png

hmm yes

Ok, in that case those projects may also be in trouble, if Zenimax finds out (or at least when someone forces them to take action.)

So, ZeniMax is butthurt because a 12 old site is using the word "Doom", seriously.

Really, people, can't you read previous posts?

The problem is not that they are 'butthurt', the problem is, if someone can prove that they knew about the trademark violation and didn't act, they may lose their trademark!

I don't get why they're only picking on DoomRL when it's not even the most popular game/mod to use the logo and name.

It's all a control and greed thing. They WILL Come after the rest of the doom community next if we don't stand up against this shit.

Strike one of us down, and you face all of us. And they'll back down because they don't want to piss off the entire gaming community.

Good luck assholes. You would have more court cases than worth your while.

Probably because DoomRL has a spiritual successor that's got a Kickstarter, and it's mentioned several times on said Kickstarter.

Arctangent said:

Probably because DoomRL has a spiritual successor that's got a Kickstarter, and it's mentioned several times on said Kickstarter.

That Kickstarter thing may actually have been the trigger. As long as it's merely an obscure fan project they can officially claim ignorance, but not if it gets some public exposure. I wonder when the other trademark owners will come after them, too.

The main issue is: If they know that their trademark is violated and someone else knows that they know, they simply cannot afford not to act.

I have to ask again: Read what came before. Aside from the hysterical fearmongering there's enough posts that try to explain what's going on here, but you seem to exclusively jump onto the dumb responses.

Graf Zahl said:

if someone can prove that they knew about the trademark violation and didn't act, they may lose their trademark!

That's somewhat overstating the process of trademark genericization. Trademarks can disappear when a particular kind of product becomes so associated with one particular make of that product in the mind of the public that they are considered indistinguishable (see: Aspirin™, Dry Ice™, Trampoline™), and there is indeed a sort of "use it or lose it" aspect where a company has to make sure that the term doesn't become the common descriptor for a certain class of product if they want to keep the trademark.

This is not the sort of thing that can readily happen to Doom™, and in fact is the opposite of what these fan projects are doing. They're not helping to make "Doom" a generic term for... any video game I guess, but instead are trying to use the specific brand identity of Doom to enhance their own stature. That's why the letter is specifically mentioning false endorsement as the basis of action - Zenimax is concerned with consumer confusion, not trademark genericization.

Somewhat ironically, "Chain gun" is actually a registered trademark, and Doom itself it contributing to its possible genericization.

Graf Zahl said:

As long as it's merely an obscure fan project they can officially claim ignorance, but not if it gets some public exposure. I wonder when the other trademark owners will come after them, too.

https://twitter.com/DOOM/status/803959351312531456

Then why haven't they gone after Brutal Doom 64 yet? You call being nominated for a fan award by Doom's official twitter obscure?

I would imagine you'd get quite a lot of wiggle room when you're actually building off of the company's product rather than doing something standalone.

And when what you're doing isn't commercial.

But this isn't a question of the content, it's a question of the very trademark and not only utilizing the logo but the very gameplay itself. It could easily be mistaken for an id product.

MetroidJunkie said:

https://twitter.com/DOOM/status/803959351312531456

Then why haven't they gone after Brutal Doom 64 yet? You call being nominated for a fan award by Doom's official twitter obscure?

No, but there's one thing I do not see: A website whose most prominent element is a minor variation of the original Doom logo.

I'm failing to see how "mistaken for an id product" is an issue when it is an id product that's been modified.

On the other hand, zeni/beth/id may have distinctly ordered this so that it WOULD get attention (everyone's talking about brurb dood when there are countless other kickass ways to play doom). We are six days away from Doom's birthday after all. Would be a way to retain people's attention in the meantime, as they make for some sort of big reveal in the coming days.

Arctangent said:

I would imagine you'd get quite a lot of wiggle room when you're actually building off of the company's product rather than doing something standalone.

And when what you're doing isn't commercial.

I assume so. He's making a free product that sells a Zenimax / iD product... albeit a product that 99.9% of people have. Chances are Brutal Doom sold a lot of younger players seeing it on Youtube for the first time.

But hey he doesn't have the right to do so and its the rights holder's call to send lawyers. They did for "Scrolls" and they have for other references. I remember Ling posting all the lawsuits that Zenimax has gone after for mentioning the word Doom in movies.

I look forward to reading this thread for months to come.

geo said:

But hey he doesn't have the right to do so and its the rights holder's call to send lawyers. They did for "Scrolls" and they have for other references.

Yeah but if you dig a bit, you notice that things were not exactly as Notch presented them in his tweets...

Rob Keyes">

Rob Keyes said:

See, the Mojang trademark application for Scrolls was rather encompassing and includes television, film and even educational uses, among others. Below is just the video games portion:

Computer games; video games; computer software; computer and video games software; computer software downloaded or downloadable; computer software publications downloaded; interactive entertainment software; data recorded electronically from the Internet; data recorded in machine readable form from the Internet; discs, tapes, cartridges, CD-ROMs and other magnetic, electronic or optical media, all bearing computer games software or video games; electronic amusement apparatus for use with television receivers; electronic games apparatus; home video game machines.

This would essentially grant them ownership of the word in every media form, something Bethesda can’t allow since their own aged franchise uses the word. If this passed, Mojang could technically aim to stop Bethesda from using the word “Scrolls,” but whether that would succeed or not is another question.

Gez said:

Yeah but if you dig a bit, you notice that things were not exactly as Notch presented them in his tweets...

Yeah I remember that too. I digress.

Well he made a Kickstarter saying from the CREATOR OF DOOM RL!!! It may confuse people thinking that ID Software is behind it, that´s why they told this guy to fix their website....
They are not going on a witch hunt, hell even they posted about Brutal Doom 64.

Same thing happened to the guy that made a Remake of Resident Evil 2 using Unreal Engine, Capcom was OK with it, till he used it to commercialy promote another game he was making. Then Capcom called the lawyers...

The pussification is strong.

I just noticed that the site already changed it's name to DRL. Hope that's the end of the story

TimeOfDeath said:

Action Doom should probably get sued because it gets sold for money.

It does?

DMPhobos said:

I just noticed that the site already changed it's name to DRL. Hope that's the end of the story

Until the Drone Racing League hears about it!

Scuba Steve said:

It does?

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/blogs/44022-/
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18700

TimeOfDeath said:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/blogs/44022-/
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18700

There are few things that you are missing.

Action Doom 2, which is one that was being Sold for 9.99 was nothing like Doom, not even the LOGO.
Plus they can say that the 9.99 is just to cover the expens of making the CD, BOX and shipping and that if you want you can get it for free...

In a surprise twist, Ralphis and I were looking into using the proper gpl'd gzdoom to re-release AD2 for steam.

There ought to just be a dedicated thread icon for armchair lawyer threads at this point.

Has it been resolved, by the way?

IMX said:

Has it been resolved, by the way?

Yes. Not only is the project now called "DRL" (or "D**mRL" depending on where you look), it's also now open-sourced and available on GitHub.

Scuba Steve said:

In a surprise twist, Ralphis and I were looking into using the proper gpl'd gzdoom to re-release AD2 for steam.

I will totally buy it again.