Quote:Original post by Raduprv
Does that mean that Blizzard can legally go after sites that host their screenshots, along with other screenshots from other games?

Well, of course Blizzard can legally "go after" any site. The question is whether or not they'd win. This would rather depend upon the nature of the site.

If it is a site containing reviews of games which use the images to better illustrate critism or praise given in the review, then it would probably fall under fair use. I would certainly argue that it would be.

On the other hand, if it was just a "screenshot library" site, then it may be harder to argue fair use. Note that although libraries are partially exempt from copyright restrictions, these restrictions do not allow the libraries to make digital copies available to the public, so an "Internet library" is de facto not a library under copyright law.

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And since the screenshots were not created by Blizzard, I am not sure how much they claim all the WoW screenshots copyright are belong to them.

Blizzard own the copyright on all the artwork of which WoW screenshots are a derived work. Unless they explicitly grant you a license to copy and distribute their artwork in the form of WoW screenshots, you don't get to copy and distribute it, unless you are exempt (usually because you can claim fair use).

You're confusing two different areas of law, copyright and trademark. He is piggybacking off of Blizzard's name, and trademark law says you can't do that. I can no more call a book "World of Warcraft" then I can create a store called "Better Than WalMart." Not because the word WalMart is copyrighted...it isn't.

Your bridge analogy sounds really good, but it really isn't. It is much harder to take a picture of a painting and sell the picture, for instance. Screenshots are much closer to this second case than the first, although there are obvious and immediate differences. Your Bill Clinton analogy is also severely flawed: you can't copyright facts, but that isn't what's going on here anyhow. Your walking analogy was just a strawman, but you knew that going in.

This is hardly an open and shut case, and quite frankly I believe the odds are stacked severely in Blizzard's favor. At the very least, he's going to lose the trademark bit, and his chances against the copyright infringement are slim.

CM

Quote:Original post by Conner McCloud
You're confusing two different areas of law, copyright and trademark. He is piggybacking off of Blizzard's name, and trademark law says you can't do that. I can no more call a book "World of Warcraft" then I can create a store called "Better Than WalMart." Not because the word WalMart is copyrighted...it isn't.

But he's not making a game called "World of Warcraft" and writing a book about Clinton IS piggybacking off the president's name. Is there a difference between the facts(where to hunt, where to etc) of a video game and the facts of a President?

Honesty, I've seen so many unofficial video game guides in my time, I'm confused about why this one is so different. I mean, there's gamefaqs.com, mobygames.com and ign.com just to name a few. There are so many on Amazon.com.

There are also many unofficial guides without unofficial or unauthorized in the title, they just have a disclaimer somewhere on the back cover.

Quote:Original post by Conner McCloud
You're confusing two different areas of law, copyright and trademark. He is piggybacking off of Blizzard's name, and trademark law says you can't do that.

No it doesn't.

Trademark law says you can't use a trademark in a way which is likely to cause confusion or mistakeness as to the nature of the mark's owner's involvement with the product for sale, or 'dilute the distinctive quality of the mark'.

In short: Is his use of "World of Warcraft" likely to trick people into thinking that his guide is endorsed by Blizzard, or disassociate the phrase "World of Warcraft" from the game in the minds of consumers?

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I can no more call a book "World of Warcraft" then I can create a store called "Better Than WalMart."

Why not?

Are consumers likely to be confused as to whether or not "Better than WalMart" is actually the store called "Wal-Mart"? I would say not. Perhaps you claim dilution? But the law specifically exempts using a mark for comparative purposes, and "Better than WalMart" is clearly comparative.

This is not to say that you'd win such a case. Obviously the chances of that are slim. Wal-Mart can afford much better liars--err--lawyers than you and unless you're incredibly rich, you just won't be able to afford to keep the case running.

The point is simply that despite what they want you to believe -- a trademark means you can't ever use that mark in any way at all or we can sue you for thousands of dollars -- the law actually gives you quite a bit of leeway in what you can do with other people's trademarks.