Epic Issues Cease-and-Desist To Fan Art

Luke Plunkett of Kotaku, the Gamer’s Guide (http://www.kotaku.com) writes:
"Remember that adorable, custom Gears Munny Emilio Lopez crafted a few weeks back? We loved it. You loved it, too. It's the cuddliest I've ever seen Marcus Fenix, a dude not renowned for his cuddliness.rnrnEpic don't love it.

They've sent Lopez a cease-and-desist (below). Apparantly making a home-made, one-off, custom figure for your Gears-mad cousin constitutes trademark infringement these days. Overreaction much?"

here's the C&D: http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/03/cad1.jpg
http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/03/cad2.jpg

Umm, technally ALL fanart (of copyrighted things) is Trademark infringement, but most corperations aren't anal enough to send out C&Ds to fanartsites....

(oh, and the links don't work)

Umm, technally ALL fanart (of copyrighted things) is Trademark infringement, but most corperations aren't anal enough to send out C&Ds to fanartsites....

(oh, and the links don't work)

actually most corporations are smart enough to realize fanart is free marketing...but i guess epic is just retarded.

fixed links and formatting too

actually most corporations are smart enough to realize fanart is free marketing...but i guess epic is just retarded.

fixed links and formatting too

Yes, but only if noone but them makes any money off of it, but then, I'm fairly sure that whatshisface made no money off of that, so I see no reason for a C&D to be issued.

Unless they want to protect the "image" of the charater. Maybe they don't want their charater portrayed in full fluffyness...

lol

Let's drive the fans away, YEAH!!

Let's drive the fans away, YEAH!!

It has been proven time and time and time again that people will eat a shit sandwich for developers if they want the product bad enough. Rather than taking a stand on principle, people will lip off about the injustice of it all *rabble rabble rabble* and then still turn around and buy the product.

Big developers know this, and they don't care who they piss off anymore. Because if the product is attractive enough, the masses will still come to sup at the trough, no matter how many times people get bent over and dry pounded along the way.

yes but why take the time, energy, and money to harass someone who causes you no harm and possibly helps you. it makes no sense.

wasnt this guy selling dolls though

wasnt this guy selling dolls though

it was a one-off present for his cousin who is obsessed with gears according to kotaku

It has been proven time and time and time again that people will eat a shit sandwich for developers if they want the product bad enough. Rather than taking a stand on principle, people will lip off about the injustice of it all *rabble rabble rabble* and then still turn around and buy the product.

Big developers know this, and they don't care who they piss off anymore. Because if the product is attractive enough, the masses will still come to sup at the trough, no matter how many times people get bent over and dry pounded along the way.

This extends to pretty much everything. It's the American way of life these days. MMM shit sammichs.

Ugh. Our lawyers are trying to do their job and protect our trademarks but I guess they didn't realize this wasn't a commercial project and they fired off a standard form letter. It is unfortunate when this happens but the problem with trademarks is you HAVE to protect them and Emilio's work looks so amazingly professional, right down to a cool package!, that they probably failed to notice this was a one-off gift for non-commercial use. What we need to do is come up with some sort of permission letter for things like these so that we're properly protecting our future commercial rights but not stopping people from doing cool fan art like this.

On behalf of Epic I apologize to Emilio and anyone who was offended by this.

-Mark Rein