As Kendle
indicated above (and total props to Kendle for breaking the news, he may be new to GAF but I've known him a long time on ChaosEdge and that was an absolute blinder of a first post!) four out of the five trademarks at issue in EA v Edge Games have now been cancelled “by court order”. The ruling is
here.
And rather neatly it is the 100th filing in the TTAB case. (Also since my last update we’ve passed 100,000 views of this thread too).
It’s true.
It’s real.
They are gone.
And also, at least so far as I can see from here, Langdell has not yet filed any motion (as he has continually threatened to do over the last six months or so) in the District Court to have their judgment overturned. Nor has he (yet) filed an appeal.
This puts Langdell at a serious disadvantage in any appeal, as he must now argue to have the trademarks reinstated rather than merely (merely? hah!) have the judgment overturned. Which would probably involve things like having to prove continual use in commerce, continual use in commerce for all the trademark categories (for example, quite apart from not having sold any games there is bugger all evidence that he has ever sold a single T-shirt, USB stick, coffee mug, pen let alone a blockbuster movie) as well as absence of fraud and absence of abandonment. Though to be quite honest I will grant that he’s not abandoned any of the trademarks on the grounds that he never validly had them in the first place.
However, there are a whole load of loose ends to clear up. I’ll have to think about some of these a bit but here are my initial reactions:
1) Is it time for a party?
Yes it is. Quite apart from any private parties you guys might want to hold, I’d like to hold a party here in this thread. We deserve it, it has been a long run for all of us (and longer for you than for me, because usually you have been left hanging around for ages, while at least I knew when nothing was happening!).
I suggest Monday 22nd April at 8:00 pm UK time (that’s 9pm Europe, 3pm East Coast, 12 noon West Coast) – it is a bit hard to find a time that suits everyone (and Monday is my only day off) – so if that is OK with you I intend to be here and on the button for two hours at least (sigh, probably five – two hours always turns out to be five) to enjoy the moment with you guys. It being the internet and all that, you will have to bring your own wine and nibbles, but other than that it is like any other party – just have fun.
2) New thread for new news?
Yeah. I’ll post one later tonight – probably a couple of hours time as there’s a bit to do (not to mention the ironing). It’s a fair enough rule. For starters it is going to refer back to this thread (so mods, don’t knock this one on the head just yet because (a) we’re going to have a party on Monday (b) it’ll take a while to get the content transferred over, especially since the UK IPO changed their system a few weeks back and many links are broken.
I'll drop mods a PM later on to suggest an acceptable approach.
3) Loose ends?
Plenty.
One of the five trademarks hasn’t been cancelled by court order (because it had been cancelled before for another reason), which might make it easier to reinstate.
There’s still a trademark in Germany.
There are still several trademarks in the UK. And actions going on.
Langdell still has (at least) three companies that appear to be trading (if they are trading at all) on the back of fraudulent trademarks and none of them are bankrupt yet.
There are still unresolved issues of fraud, blackmail, perjury, falsifying evidence and a bundle of other criminal charges.
There’s still the remotest possibility of appeal.
And, of course, EA haven’t yet dropped the case at TTAB (which could still yet lead to judicial findings of fraud).
4) Stuff in the meanwhile?
It’ll take me at least several days to come back with an assessment of the legal position going forward (which now encompasses far more that EA/Future versus Edge – now that the trademarks are gone it is sensible to consider further civil suits by other affected parties, like Edgegamers, Mobigames, Marvel etc etc).
5) What’s the BIG question?
The big question is why it took the US justice system nearly three years to enforce a court order.
There are lots of lesser questions, like why did the UK IPO admit a trademark registration to an unidentified body, like why did Future intervene in the TTAB case, like why did ….. oh, there’s loads of them.
The REALLY BIG question is how come justice was not done for so many years, and the big answer to how it got resolved is because of open justice and the internet (and specifically ChaosEdge). That’s a damn huge argument for open justice – which has been way more open here than in most UK cases for example, in being able to analyse every filing. It isn’t like it is excessive either, the RFCExpress site reports something marginally over 1000 viewings for this case, which by my count is nearly all me.
There are other big questions as well, but I’m sure I will get onto those eventually and in another thread.
Enormous thanks to everyone who has followed this thread. I know I got a bit tetchy at times during particularly horrible doldrum periods, but I can tell by the view counts that people kept watching. Sometimes I just had this horrible feeling it would all go bad and nobody would notice!
This has been a rather off-the-cuff post – I’ll have to do another later (and also update the OP and various other things).
EDIT: Dammit, forgot to update the OP. Will have to wait a bit.
