Space Marine Mess- M.C.A. Hogarth

I’m not surprised about this in the least. It’s really too bad for that author. Games Workshop will crush you under their boot when it comes to copyright issues no matter how completely ridiculous the argument. They have literally copyrighted almost anything you could imagine involving any aspect of their franchise in one form or another.

Shaun spends more money on Warhammer then I do on Windstones and he frequents their forums on a nearly constant basis. From general titles and terminology to entire phrases, they are the Walmart of the miniature gamer community.

Warhammer can’t copyright the term “elves” but they have copyright over the term “high elves” Anything that refers to any race specific traits, no matter how broad, just like “marine” vs. “space marine” I hate to say it, but GW will undoubtedly destroy that poor author. They do not give an inch when it comes to their copyright and they are just doing what they consider to be protecting their business. I don’t agree with it all the time, but I do understand it I guess, to a point anyway.

Pssh. This just disgusts me. That a greedy bunch of sods in a gaming company would have the unmitigated gall to try to trademark something so generic and non-specific as the term ‘space marine’ is a pretty darn sorry state of affairs. Who the billy blue blazes let them smack a trademark on that term in the first place? Trademarks are not for general terms, they are for specific ideas, images, and concepts.

And for them to then turn their big scary legal goons on some poor regular jane who just writes e-books to help pay for her kids’ school fees: ohh, isn’t GW brave! So courageous and daring, to target such a dangerous target! I am trembling in my space boots. Oh, wait, I can’t; they’ve probably trademarked ‘space boots,’ since it’s obviously what space marines would wear.

It at least somewhat restores my faith in humanity that Amazon has retracted their hold on the e-book, and I can only hope that word of GW’s little clever-pants maneuver gets around and ticks off enough people that they’re too embarrassed to try to enforce any more of their nonspecific trademarks. They may trademark their characters and universe all they like, but they can just keep their grimy hands off of general terms of reference.

For me, I don’t care how fabulous their games may be; I’ll have nothing to do with a company that behaves so badly.