As for me, I find that providing quality service and value to each of my clients is the best way to avoid problems…and I seem to be doing OK. But thanks for your concern.

Best of luck in your legal career! I am sure you will do well…there’s always room for another anal retentive nitpicker in the bar!

Tom B

I gotta tell you Mona, being such a nitpick does not endear you to anyone. It merely demonstrates hubris on your part!

In other words it’s not a registered mark. There are certainly common law claims, but claiming that the mark is registered is inaccurate.

http://tarr.uspto.gov/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78807479&action=Request+Status

I feel you missed a few flaws in Timothy’s approach to this dispute. While everything he has done has been within the bounds of law, legality is determined by the court and I have a feeling Timothy doesn’t have a chance in hell. I feel the jury would be quite displeased with the facts that:

1. Timothy did not remove himself from the IGDA board when this dispute started. To me, that’s a big no-no; suing a member of an organization while still serving on the board. I could be wrong on this, but his picture is still on the website, so frankly, it still appears he’s on the board. The right thing to do would be to take a hiatus until this blows over; if he was in the right, he’d have no problem getting his position back.

2. Timothy hasn’t used the name for a new product in years (again, as far as everything I’m reading has reported). While you are correct that a trademark is a trademark and he owns the rights to it, I’m sure he knew the existence of EDGE for iPhone within weeks of its release and could have easily sent a cease and desist at that time instead of waiting so long. Again, he has legally done what he’s entitled to, but it’s not going to fly in the public/jury’s eye. Then again, isn’t there some law that one can’t wait out a trademark infringement and needs to file a complaint as soon as they’re aware? In this case, I believe Mobigames won an award shortly after release, and considering Timothy is highly tied to the IGDA, there’s no way he could have missed this.

3. Also related to not using the Edge name for years: he can’t claim any lost profits or a share of EDGE’s profits. He technically can, but it’s really ungrounded; the best he could do without looking bad to the jury is send a cease and desist. Mobigames would have likely immediately complied, has Timothy not used constant scare tactics and superfluous threats. Yes, neither of those are concrete facts, but Timothy hasn’t (yet) claimed that the quotes that Mobigames has posted are lies and it’s all fairly traceable and provable in a courtroom.

4. Lastly, Timothy’s claims that EDGE is a clone of “Bobby Bearing” are complete lies. Timothy knows better than anyone else that game mechanics are reused and (most of the time) un-patentable; furthermore, I’m sure any good survey with a screen shot of “Bobby Bearing” would have the majority of people guessing that the screenshot was of “Marble Madness”. Frankly, I’d never heard of “Bobby Bearing” until this hit the news and Timothy Langdell knows that it sold poorly when it came out and was quickly forgotten. The first game EDGE reminded me of was a shareware game called “Kiki The Nanobot”; even if Timothy had a way to retro-actively patent the mechanic of “an object traversing a grid of cubes” it would never go through; you can’t patent prior art. To tell you the truth, the whole concept dates back to M.C. Escher, and before that, the ancient Egyptians.

Please forgive me if I’m legally dense; however, this whole situation is ridiculous. From my perspective, Apple has been in this boat countless times and whether it’s required by law or not, Apple always does the right thing, even when it’s in a stern manner. Yes, they don’t release the details of out-of-court settlements, but there are still plenty of instances when they have done the right thing, such as the time they sent an apology and reworked their canned responses after a little girl sent in some suggestions and got letter back with “angry-sounding” legalese.

This is the most used statment of people (lawyers, ‘consultants’, …) that make money abusing from patents, trademarks, etc.:
“While you or I may not agree with those laws related to Trademarks, they are what they are.”

Yes, those laws are obsolete and with procedures that make them to be abused by people with no scrupulous to be used contrary to the reason for which they were created.

If Tim overstated his credentials, which it appears he may have, is not really my problem. Though it appears that the majority of the things stated in his statement are true, there may have been some that were not. I just don’t know. (Though saying his whole career is a lie is probably an overstatement as well.)

I am pretty sure that he has licensed the TM Edge to the folks who publish the mag and other mentioned…whether that amounts to “spawning” is problematic.

You say, in one paragraph, that he has never worked on a game and then that he has published 30 games. Publishing a game is certainly, for many, working on a game…so that may be splitting hairs…but I get your point. As for the other “almost 170 game” he claims to have worked on…I have no idea where he came up with that number.

SImilarly, I have no idea of the quality of the “Investigation” that has been done or even who this “we” you refer to in your post is.

I do understand Tim’s reluctance to continue to reply to the demands for more and more information in the flame war on some of the forums while he is being called names and treated so viciously when he did try to engage in a dialog.

I just seems like people’s minds are already made up, so I would suspect he saw no point.

All in all, I do not represent Tim or his company…or the IGDA for that matter. Like they say, “I am not my brother’s keeper.” So, I don’t have any answers for you.

I have been very disturbed and, to be honest hurt, by a lot of what has been said about me personally. Flaming for you guys may be great sport. But I take my reputation in the industry seriously.

I am committed to independent developers. I provide free consultations to these guys on a regular basis. I provide free services to the IGF winners and as much free advice to the indie community at large as I can afford to. Sure, my typoing sucks from time to time. But people calling me a hack or a bad attorney because of a few typos, or because I express my personal opinion and they do not agree with it, IMHO goes too far.

I also contribute hundred or hours of my time each year the thee IGDA. So, when someone takes a cheap shot at the org like Carless did, I do tend to get defensive. I also take offense when when people who do not care enough about the industry to do anything other the criticize and bitch start trashing the IGDA instead of getting involved to try to make it better. So, yeah, I was probably a little too snide in my initial responses…which, unfortunately, that sort of dumbassed shit is pretty common for me.

As for this whole Langdell thing, I just don’t have anything more to say about it. There are far more productive things on my agenda that need my attention.

GL & HF!

Tom B

the questions are easy, is there a controversy surrounding the IGDA because of Langdell and how can we avoid the bad publicity he is bringing? hidding the truth is not an answer

at http://igda.org/board/#langdell you can read:

“Tim is a 30-year veteran of the video game industry, CEO of EDGE Games, its lead game designer, game developer, as well as professor and Lead Faculty for the MFA in Videogame Production & Design at National University . He also instigated interactive media and game curriculum at the University of Southern California Film School in 1992, and taught at USC for 14 years before moving to become Department Chair at National. Tim has worked on almost 200 titles over his career to-date, and is currently working on new games for the PS3, Wii, PC and Xbox 360. He founded EDGE Games in 1979, which in addition to the many EDGE videogames has spawned such well-known EDGE branded ventures as EDGE Magazine (published by Future), EDGE game PCs (made by Velocity Micro), EDGE-brand comics (published by Malibu/Marvel) and THE EDGE videogame controllers (made by DATEL). He is co-founder of AIAS, was responsible for the first televised game awards show, recently served on AIAS’ Board of Directors and assisted in launching ELSPA and FAST in the UK . Tim is also active in various ‘ Hollywood ‘ guilds/academies: the Producers Guild (sits on the new media board), the Writers Guild (helps run their Videogame Writers caucus), as well as ATAS (Emmys) and AFTRA. Tim has written several books – the historic Spectrum Handbook (1982), and more recently Game Testing All In One , and chapter author in the IGDA Writers SIG book Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames . He gained his PhD in Psychology from University College London, his MA in Psychology from Nottingham University , and his joint BS in Physics/Astrophysics and Psychology from Leicester University”

given how much investigation has been done we all know he never worked on a game. some of the developers who worked for his company in the past told us he never paid the royalties, and we did not find more than 30 games published by his company in 30 years

he never “spawned” the edge magazine, there is no reference to his company in the last issues, and why is it called Next Gen in North America do you think? he never “spawned” Marvel’s comics, game PCs, … he never published a game since 1994, and his whole professional life is a lie. all the proofs have been given

on Gamasutra you said Langdell is associated with the edge magazine, and that’s wrong too. maybe you should answer to this question: do we have an extortionist at the IGDA board like Simon suggested in his article? If you answer no, we want some proofs, but Langdell himself failed on this…

To be honest, I am not sure what questions you want me to answer. I think I pretty much covered my position on this in my initial post.

In addition, I have had personal communications with both Tim Langdell and David Papazian about this matter, which both have asked me to keep confidential. And this is a complicated dispute, for sure. But nothing I learned has changed my position especially as applied to the IGDA and Tim L.’s position on the IGDA Board..

I know that this is not a popular position, as I have been subjected to all sorts of negative comments on several of the “Independent Developer” forums where this has become to “cause of the day.” But I call em as I see em.

That does not mean that I am taking anyone’s side in this matter…just that it is not a simple or one sided as originally presented and that the fact the Langdell is an IGDA Board member was not relevant to the story.

As I have said, I also think that the original author should have done a better job of securing comments from all parties, including Papazian, Langell and the IGDA before posting his piece.

That’s all.