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There are some things that just make you stop and wonder: “Is this the beginning of the end?” Things like global warming, widespread war and poverty, and – of course – the mystifying popularity of Twilight. And then there are things that make you quit your job and spend all your money on a tour of the world's greatest steakhouses, because – damn it all – the four horsemen of the apocalypse are banging down your door right now. Thing numero uno? Duke Nukem Forever's rapidly approaching release date.
Yep, you read that correctly. Duke Nukem Forever's landing on shelves this time. For real. The reason? Gearbox Software – they of Borderlands and Brothers in Arms fame – have started cracking the whip on Duke's notoriously meandering development cycle, and they're making sure the game finally waltzes out the door in time for a 2011 release.
"It's coming in 2011. It's coming in 2011. It's absolutely going to come, and we will have it shipped. We brought you Borderlands last year. We know what we're doing. It's coming on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and Windows PC," said Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford during the big unveiling.
But this is Duke Nukem Forever we're talking about. What reason do you have to believe there's not just another 12 year delay waiting around the corner to ambush you the second you get your hopes up? Well, the game's playable at the Penny Arcade Expo, for one. Right now. Look! Here are some videos! You can watch (or read about) Duke Nukem taking a nice, relieving pee this very moment. Let it soothe your fears just as it soothes him.
Ewww. That was a pretty weird sentence. Good thing the apocalypse is happening any day now, or we'd probably never live it down. And on that note, we're making our exit. We've got steakhouses to tour, after all.
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A year and a half ago, we noted how nice it was to see Twitter's rather laissez-faire attitude towards trademarks, where it seemed to have no problem with third parties making use of Twitter-related terms in their own names -- such as TwitPic, Stocktwits, Tweetdeck and many others. So, at first I was a bit surprised to see a report claiming that Twitter might be cracking down on those who use such names. The truth, however, actually demonstrates how many companies should respond to many trademarked situations.
First off, it's worth pointing out, as people always do, that one of the oddities of trademark law is the idea that a trademark holder has to prevent others from using the mark without permission, or they run the risk of losing the mark. That leads to lots of nasty cease and desist letters from lawyers, and people defending them claiming they "have to" do this. But that is not so at all. First off, they only have to do that for cases where there is a likelihood of confusion, so they can certainly leave many other cases alone. But, more importantly, there's another option out there, which very few trademark holders embrace: they can just give a free license out.
The story about Twitter is really just that the company has filed for a trademark on TWEET, which is perfectly reasonable. Just because you're getting a trademark, it doesn't mean you're going to stop others from doing things (and, the TechCrunch post seems confused by a different trademark on Tweet -- but trademarks are specific to areas of use, so it's possible to have multiple trademarks on the same term in totally different areas of use). And, in fact, Twitter made a statement pointing out that it does, in fact, freely license its marks:
"We freely license "Tweet" for ecosystem partners who are using it correctly as part of accessing the Twitter API. That said, "Tweet" means something specific and we aim to protect that meaning. More on this can be found here: http://support.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/77641."
This seems like not just a perfectly reasonable trademark policy, but a smart one for encouraging others to help promote you and feel comfortable working with you as a partner. It's really surprising how quickly most other companies go for the legal nastygram, rather than "freely license" trademarks in cases where the use is clearly promoting the brand.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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Ah, the fun never stops with the still ambiguous world of publicity rights, a relatively recent, but growing field of "intellectual property" that has all sorts of problems. THREsq points us to a legal analysis of whether or not California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a publicity rights claim over the character "Thor," found in Starcraft II. It's hard to argue that the character isn't based on Ahhh-nold, as it has his accent and repeats (sometimes paraphrased) famous Arnold lines from various movies:
In some ways, this is not all that different than the recent complaint from Michael Jackson's estate over the "zombie" Michael Jackson found in the game Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, to make this even more interesting, Schwarzenegger is still leading the legal fight against violent video games in California, so it seems even more amusing that his "voice" appears in a new video game.
That said, there's no indication that Schwarzenegger is actually upset by this -- and he apparently has not complained about other attempts to mimic his voice, such as with the Simpson's character McBane. So, at this point, the post above appears to be idle speculation on how a publicity rights claim might play out. However, it seems like a sad commentary on the state of publicity rights law that it's even worth considering whether such a creative choice by the gamemakers might break the law.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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