Edge games tim langdell

That is how the law works, Edge Games didnt invent that law, its just the way it is. So if your best friend uses your trademark in the same type of product you have to take action just as much as if some huge faceless conglomerate used your trademark.

I've always thought of the Escapist as a harmless games mag with a good article every couple of years. The utter lack of due diligence in that article blew my mind, and now to hear they're defending it Quote from: Ivan on August 18, , AM. Yeah, no, I understand how trademark law works. It's just that it's pretty clear in this case that Edge Games does very little BESIDES defending their trademark and seems to have a long history of shady and broken relationships with all kinds of people regarding IP rights some of which don't even seem to know who Edge Games are.

Honestly, in the case of Mobigames, Edge Games probably is in the right, and I was hesitant at first to say anything on the matter. But looking at their past history, it becomes very clear that the case with Mobigames has nothing to do with an honest attempt to defend their trademark. It's kind of like when a kid comes to you and says that they were punched by a bully. And you're like ok, that's terrible, you need to defend yourself. And then you look a little into it and see that he's always punched by bullies and that the bullies are actually very nice people for the most part and that the kid is kind of an asshole.

But being shifty or dislikable doesn't negate legal rights and obligations, despite Papazian's apparent willingness to roll the dice and hope that it might. Knowing that he was at a serious legal disadvantage, he has apparently decided to do all he can to portray Langdell as a dick and a bully, and hope that the court of public opinion will somehow carry the day.

The gaming press was, and continues to be, perhaps a little too eager to join in and may yet come out of this mess looking like it chose bandwagon-hopping over actual fact. As the matter currently stands, Papazian and Mobigame appear emboldened by the wave of negative public opinion that has crashed into Langdell, while Edge Games remains determined to protect its trademark even as it continues to act evasively and lose ground in the public eye as a result.

The truth is that bad behavior on both sides has turned what should have been a relatively straightforward copyright dispute into a nasty and very personal mess; unfortunately, the game media was just a little too enthusiastic in getting that ball rolling. There's still a long way to go before a vote on Langdell is held and even when it happens, there's no guarantee he'll be turfed out as a result.

But progress is being made; meanwhile, given his history of wielding the courts like a blunt instrument , moving ahead slowly to ensure all the rules are followed is most definitely prudent. Yes he did! He wanted the disc 1 clone to be "as close as possible to the original", but couldn't quite find the words to explain why. Then a few months later, brilliantly, Langdell found a disc 3, this time definitely the original disc, even though that was disc 2 and had been lost.

The judge adds, "I found his evidence confusing under this head; it is possible that disk 2 and disk 3 were supposed to be one and the same. He claimed he was "technically incompetent to do such a thing", which is an odd claim for one of the leading software developers of the 21st century, and the judge called bollocks.

Langdell went further with his deception, producing a "long and tortuous explanation of the emails" he sent to his chosen disc expert. But somehow managed to produce an email response from Steggles to a message the expert had never received. Langdell had invented an email that talked about this "clone" disc in hindsight, to try to cover those tracks. The judge said, "I have no doubt not merely that it was not received but that it was never in fact sent.

The overwhelming inference is that the suspect Steggles email was concocted as support for Dr Langdell's story that he had created a cloned disk. The truth is a prosaic one, namely that Dr Langdell concocted disk 1 in support of his claim that he had invented the EDGE logo in When this was exposed by the claimant's expert he constructed an elaborate explanation and created disk 3, having learned from the Report how to avoid the mistakes he made the first time.

At this point I begin to feel a bit sorry for Langdell. To have told so many lies, and to have weaved yourself so thickly in bullshit for so many years, it must be terrifying when it all starts to unravel. He's clearly a very sorry man, and the exposure of his incompetence, while undeniably gratifying, actually descends quickly into the pathetic. And his continued avoidance of the truth got him into even more trouble in the hearing.

Langdell had refused to let the court read the "without prejudice" correspondence between Langdell and Future prior to the trial. Future had expressed they'd be fine with it, but Dr L wanted it kept from the judge.

Future lawyers pointed out that the discs had only been mentioned just before the proceedings had started, his claimed evidence having been described as existing in a paper form before then. Langdell then, rather stupidly, went on to claim that he had made reference to these discs on which his evidence was stored numerous times in this unseen correspondence.

He was stating that Future were outright lying. Which the court saw as a waiver in his right to keep the correspondence from the court, and it became available. And of course contained no mention of any discs. Amazingly Langdell then produced two emails sent to him on 2nd October and 23rd February that were sent to him, he claimed, by Future's lawyers and contained mentions of the disc.

He said that Future had left these out "deliberately and dishonestly". But this happened during the closing submissions of the case, and the judge was in a predicament.

Langdell had returned to the States, and arranging a new court hearing for this new supposed evidence - which would, Proudman points out, support Langdell's case for the discs as evidence - would be "no easy task", and neither side wished for the case to continue.

So Justice Proudman chose not to reopen the matter, based on Future's having carried out a full search of its IT systems to find these missing emails, and no such thing appearing. Langdell has not offered to do the same, and won't let Future examine the digital evidence. Their last minute appearance, dubious authenticity, led the judge to believe that they were never sent at all. And Langdell didn't even manage to get the format to match Future's own emails, while they looked suspiciously similar to the suspect email to Steggles and others he seemingly cooked up.

The judge says that while she cannot make a ruling of forgery, but she heavily implies it. Oh, and there's more. And then that he applied for the trademark in February , which he managed to pay for by December , by which point Future had applied for it too. Which isn't exactly what he stuck with. After he made enough of a pain in the arse of himself, Future bought the rights from him completely. Most notably, this sparked a legal battle with the makers of the game EDGE. Langdell's behavior also attracted the attention of Electronic Arts , who during this ongoing saga released the game Mirror's Edge.

On April 17th, , Langdell's claim of ownership of the term Edge was cancelled by a California judge, thus preventing him from pursuing any further litigation. This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:. Until you earn points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved. This week Langdell objected to the cancellation, filing a three-page protest full of the technicalities and procedural bullshit that have attended to every statement he's made about the matter since But he's done.

David Papazian, of Edge developer Mobigame, gave a triumphal statement on Thursday. The A. About Kotaku Store.