No more space marines...

[Fishbowl Helmet]

Okay so this story has been percolating for a few months, years really, and it looks like it's coming to a head.

Games Workshop, the holders of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 IPs, has decided that their trademark of the term "Space Marine" applies to fiction now as well as table-top role-playing games.

Boing Boing has an article.

Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton have tweeted about this, and John Scalzi has mentioned talking to a lawyer and suing someone today, but then quickly turned it into a joke. So here's to hoping. I for one would hope the president of the SFWA has something to say about this.

EDIT: Just for clarity they currently hold this trademark:
"IC 028. US 022. G & S: board games, parlor games, war games, hobby games, toy models and miniatures of buildings, scenery, figures, automobiles, vehicles, planes, trains and card games and paint, sold therewith. FIRST USE: 19870900. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19871000"

According to TESS.

 

[HareBrain]

Ugh. Just ... ugh.

 

[EricWard]

'Space marines' is still a thing? I've been using that as a punchline for tired cliches since 2009.

 

[Vince W]

I knew there was a reason I stopped supporting Games Workshop. Plonkers.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

And of course io9 has jumped on the story.

 

[EricWard]

If by some absurd stretch of madness that gw actually wins, "Cosmic Coastguard™" sounds like a better alternative anyway.

 

[Vince W]

Sailing Soldiers™.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Stellar Seamen?

 

[alchemist]

I read that io9 link and the whole story is pretty disgusting. Here's the blog of the writer GW are picking on http://mcahogarth.org/?p=10593

They told Amazon they owned the trademark. Amazon went "Huh? Wha? We're being sued?!?!?" (which they weren't) and pulled the offending children's book, leaving the author with the choice of spending thousands to challenge GW or lose the biggest seller of her book.

I'm.......angry

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Ridiculous. Crazy. I suspect they have not a leg to stand on, but can anyone afford to prove it?

 

[Ray Pullar]

Semper fi. In space no one can hear Taps.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

When the Starship Troopers movie came out, a lot of the munchkins at the local Games Workshop stores complained bitterly about how the movie ripped off Games Workshop's Intellectual Property.

I explained to them that GW came up with Warhammer 40K in 1987. But Heinlein published Starship Troopers in 1958. And, if you read the book of Starship Troopers (very different from the movie), you'll see just how much GW ripped off from Heinlein.

 

[EricWard]

I kind of want to write a space marine story just for spite now.

 

[Ray Pullar]

Possible titles: The Last Space Marine, Space Marine stand down!, Space Marines demobbed, No copyright for old Space Marines.

 

[EricWard]

Possible titles: The Last Space Marine, Space Marine stand down!, Space Marines demobbed, No copyright for old Space Marines.

The start of my legally-distinct Conflict Cudgel 30G series.

 

[Mangara]

Awful actions of an awful company. Doesn't care for its fans, as long as it sells them more tat.

 

[Ursa major]

I've been avoiding using the term, space marine, but maybe I shouldn't have been.

Stellar Seamen?

Isn't that something to do with the panspermia hypothesis...?

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I have a spoof on this sort of thing in my super hero novel. The MC has a copyright symbol on her super suit, just below her distinctive logo.

And I don't want to write a Space Marine (TM) story. I want to find one that pre-dates GW's existence. I'm sure I remember an old B+W movie where the hapless comedy duo end up drafted into a kind of futuristic Roman Empire military, and they are specifially told they are now in the "Imperial Space Marines". I thought it might have been Abbott and Costello, but the closest I can find on Google is "Abbott and Costello go to Mars", and that doesn't quites sound like the movie I vaguely remember seeing on TV many years ago.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

An anthology of space marine fiction would be a sweet stick in the eye of GW. But just about any military sf is going to at least approach the term, if not actually use it.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I think the problem is that many military sf stories approach the term.

They have to specifically used the term Space Marine, before GW ever did, to really put a photon torpedo through the black hearts of GW's Space Lawyers(TM).