Recently it was pretty big news that Nintendo issued takedowns to Facepunch for Garry's Mod content, and now Garry Newman of Facepunch has written up a blog post with some comments on it.
I think it’s kind of ridiculous to take down assets that don’t hurt your bottom line and aren’t being sold for profit and it’s crazy that he doesn’t see it that way too.
I’d like to think there is a universe where Nintendo and other companies recognize the value that these add to their brands and proactively issue free licenses to use the IP as a component of how they maintain and enforce rights.
You can lose rights to your IP if you don’t take steps to enforce it.
This is oft repeated but it’s not true. Copyrights do not get revoked if you don’t enforce your exclusivity. Trademarks can be genericised but only in extreme cases (band-aid is NOT genericised for example).
Nintendo is hyper litigious but not for any legal requirement to defend their copyrights.
I think it’s kind of ridiculous to take down assets that don’t hurt your bottom line and aren’t being sold for profit and it’s crazy that he doesn’t see it that way too.
You can lose rights to your IP if you don’t take steps to enforce it.
There is no universe where Nintendo are not going to clamp down on this kind of thing.
Rightly or wrongly. They’ve been doing it for years so I don’t get why anyone is surprised it’s happening now.
I’d like to think there is a universe where Nintendo and other companies recognize the value that these add to their brands and proactively issue free licenses to use the IP as a component of how they maintain and enforce rights.
You can lose trademarks, but this is a copyright issue. You don’t have to defend copyright to keep it.
This is oft repeated but it’s not true. Copyrights do not get revoked if you don’t enforce your exclusivity. Trademarks can be genericised but only in extreme cases (band-aid is NOT genericised for example).
Nintendo is hyper litigious but not for any legal requirement to defend their copyrights.