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  #1  
Old January 28th, 2010, 10:16 PM
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Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

A company called Lone Wolf Development contacted me with the following letter. In short the term Army Builder is trademarked. They pointed out several place where the term was being used on the website. I took care of the places that they pointed out by simply changing the term Army Builder to Army Drafter. Here is the letter:

Quote:
The name Army Builder exclusively refers to the Army Builder BRAND of roster construction software tools (or points calculators, if you prefer). While other roster construction tools certainly exist, the name Army Builder may only be legally used in conjunction with the Army Builder brand from Lone Wolf Development.

Due to the concise nature of the Army Builder name and the product's prominence in the marketplace for more than decade, some consumers may mistakenly use the name to refer to other tools. This is like using the term Band-Aid to refer to another brand of adhesive bandages, and it's something we are legally required to monitor.

Any website where users post information that uses the Army Builder name improperly must either remove the content or revise it, at their discretion. This often results in the content being removed, since sites are frequently reluctant to change content they did not create, and with good reason. The easiest way to avoid having posts removed in the future is to simply use a general term like "points calculator", list creator", or "roster construction tool" in reference to products other than Lone Wolf Development's Army Builder brand.

In case you're wondering why we're actively policing the use of the term, it's a legal requirement that we do this. The term Army Builder is a registered trademark belonging to Lone Wolf Development and as such we have exclusive rights to use that mark in connection with any game-related computer software. If we allow the improper use of our mark, we could ultimately lose the trademark, which would allow another company to legally release a competing product called "Army Builder". We are thus required to do this. If you are interested in understanding this issue better, there is an excellent article on wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark).

PLEASE NOTE! Anyone is absolutely welcome to write their own roster creation tools - we have no desire to suppress other people's creativity. We simply require that everyone refrain from using the "Army Builder" trademark when doing so.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this explanation makes the situation clear. If you have general questions about the product, please post them on our support forums at support.wolflair.com or send them to support@wolflair.com. For questions of a legal nature, please send them to legal@wolflair.com.

Rob Bowes, President
Lone Wolf Development

Last edited by truth; January 29th, 2010 at 08:57 AM.
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  #2  
Old January 28th, 2010, 11:02 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a Copyrighted phrase

Sounds like they're at least being cool about it, and not just dropping a hammer like GW would.

BTW, Lone Wolf's software... sooooooo good.

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  #3  
Old January 28th, 2010, 11:25 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a Copyrighted phrase

He was quite nice about it.

I've read the article on genericized trademarks before and it's not pretty. The word "escalator" and "band-aid" are prime examples, and I can completely see where he's coming from.

You might want to contact Jay Cain about that too, if neither you nor the Lone Wolf guy has already.
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  #4  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 07:01 AM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

How did they find out about this?

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  #5  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 08:03 AM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

Quote:
Originally Posted by pixlepix View Post
How did they find out about this?
They probably just Googled "army builder" and a flurry of things popped up.
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  #6  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 09:04 AM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

It's been going on for a while. Privateer Press got one that wasn't quite as politely worded. Personally, I don't think they can ask what they're asking, just like Johnson and Johnson can't sue me as an individual for calling an adhesive bandage a Bandaid. If someone is marketing an alternate product under the term Army Builder then that's infringement, but I can call any software I want an "army builder" and not be liable for squat, as long as I'm not selling or promoting it.

Not trying to knock Lone Wolf or anything but the whole IP situation in relation to online content is getting ridiculous.
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  #7  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 09:36 AM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

They actually did a really long segment about this on Episode 49 of theD6generation.com, including an interview with the President of Lone Wolf.

One of the hosts of the D6 is also a lawyer and explained a lot of why companies have to do this. It was a really informative podcast.

Apparently Lone Wolf (along with every other company that has something trademarked) has to do their own policing of this kind of thing, otherwise they risk losing the name and can't stop anyone from releasing a product under the same name (which in turn is obviously bad for them).

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Last edited by nyys; March 3rd, 2010 at 08:54 PM.
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  #8  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 03:13 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

Quote:
Originally Posted by nyys View Post
Apparently Lone Wolf (along with every other company that has something trademarked) has to do their own policing of this kind of thing, otherwise they risk losing the name and can't stop anyone from releasing a product under the same name (which in turn is obvioulsy bad for them).
This very thing happened with the whole "netbook" thing. I am sure you guys all know what a netbook is, but for the one or two people that don't, it's just a smaller, more portable laptop.

Anyways, apparently this company had netbook trademarked back in like 1998, but discontinued the line of computers in like 2003. So, like 6 years later they tried sueing people like Dell and Google and such for using the word netbook. I am not sure whatever happened to the case, but I doubt it went anywhere. The main opposition was that netbook had already come into common use, and because they didn't stop it years earlier as it was starting to come into use, they basically "lost" the trademark.
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  #9  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 08:44 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

"Army Builder" seems like a pretty generic term to trademark. I'm mean if your using a tool to build an army wouldn't you naturally call it an army builder?

(No, silly it's a Roster Creation Tool. )
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  #10  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 08:56 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

Yeah, it's definitely a generic sounding name. That's what I named my spread sheet I built that does all my Scape armies for me.

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  #11  
Old March 3rd, 2010, 10:57 PM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

It's also a dumb trademark because it can apply to non-software related ideas. For example, I could say that nyys is a great army builder because he creates unique lists, couldn't I? It's such a generic term.

The whole patent/trademark/copyright system in this country is so broken it's ridiculous.
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  #12  
Old March 4th, 2010, 12:38 AM
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Re: Army Builder is a trademarked phrase

People use software to... draft their armies?

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(I've also played many matches with great, fun people who were using Q9. So using Q9 doesn't make you a tool. But being a tool sure seems to make you use Q9.)
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