You need to stop. You clearly don't know about legalities in IP cases. I do. You're wrong on so many counts. I'm not even going to begin, but I will say that there are legal definitions to "access" and "substantial similarities." In these cases they use these words as legal terms with specific meanings, not sarcastically in air quotes.
Case dismissed! Discovery and Tardigrade game "not similar"
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You need to stop. You clearly don't know about legalities in IP cases. I do. You're wrong on so many counts. I'm not even going to begin, but I will say that there are legal definitions to "access" and "substantial similarities." In these cases they use these words as legal terms with specific meanings, not sarcastically in air quotes.
If this is demonstrably true, then it is proveable in court. If it isn't, it's an irrelevant conspiracy theory. Either way, it has no bearing on a court asking a plaintiff to provide evidence of what the law requires.
You are looking for unfairness where it does not lie - someone making a claim in court is being asked to prove their claim according to the law.
I would say that patent law is a very different beast than IP law. They may look superficially similar because they involve ideas turned into products but there are differences in implementation and control. And with patents, anyway, you're just giving a Chinese firm extra material to steal whatever you've worked on. That's the big equalizer.
I'm not attorney. what I remember from my business law classes and $1 won't buy coffee.
But the burden of proof remains on the plaintiff, either way.
Using your example of Kimba the White Lion (which never went to a lawsuit, despite several protests in Japan and encouragement for the animation company to do so) to illustrate the difference between it and the Tardigrades lawsuit:
Kimba was widely played throughout North America beginning in 1966, 28 years before The Lion King came out, giving it ample time to be seen by a large audience here, including the Disney writers.
The co-director of The Lion King, Roger Allers, lived in Japan in the 80s and worked in animation at the time that a remake of Kimba was being broadcast there.
Osamu Tezuka, the creator of the Jungle Emperor Leo manga which Kimba was based on, met Walt Disney in 1964 and Disney expressed a desire to make something similar in theme to his Astro Boy.
Two of the animators of The Lion King said that they had seen Kimba growing up in the 60s, and had assumed many of the other animators had as well given its popularity.
Matthew Broderick, when he got hired to do voicework for the film, actually initially thought he was being hired to do a Disney remake of Kimba the White Lion and that they had just told him the wrong name for his character (Simba instead of Kimba).
Disney put out a early animated promotional video for the film where the lion cub actually was white like Kimba was.
Both stories centered on the theme of "the circle of life". Both stories featured Kimba/Simba looking up to the clouds in the shape of his father. Both stories featured an evil lion named Scar. Those are direct thematic, visual, and name elements.
Both stories also featured a wise baboon, a funny bird, and a pair/trio of laughing hyenas, though some of that can possibly be chalked up to the African setting.
So in addition to having more and clearer connections to the alleged source material than Discovery does to Tardigrades, there was ample time, opportunity, and exposure for people working on The Lion King to see Kimba the White Lion, while that's harder to demonstrate for the barely public Tardigrades which didn't have much time or widespread exposure before Discovery started production.
There's also the fact (mentioned here numerous times) that spacefaring tardigrades were in the zeitgeist at the time both Tardigrades and Discovery were being made because of the news announcement of them being extremophiles that could survive in space and being featured on the rebooted Cosmos.
If Tardigrades had all of the above going for it in addition to the few thematic and visual similarities, then that would be grounds to continue the court case, because the animators and possibly the director in the hypothetical Kimba vs. Simba case would have said under oath that they were familiar with the previous film.
Tardigrades doesn't, so they have to essentially shit or get off the pot and prove they have grounds for the case to continue. That's how the courts are supposed to work.
The law asks for access - You obviously can't sue someone for using an idea that you yourself never actually published anywhere. But this guy did publish his work - both in description, and trailers widely accessable on YouTube.
That means, the law how it is read - is essentially just the Lobbyist-wetdream version: "Prove who exactly at what point in time did saw it". That's unreasonable. Again: Frank Herbert could NEVER have proven when and where George Lucas has read "Dune"! It's just impossible. It's enough that Dune was actually published.
Also, on a side note, but I think many of you got the wrong idea here: This guy alonewon't stop DIS, nor even really HURT the show, nor SHOULD he - he only should be properly re-imbursed for his idea that was being used - like the royalties writers get for coming up with ideas that are used in episodes.
And yet, you wuld never be able to prove when and where specifically the writers of "Lion King" actually saw the White Lion. Because it's impossible. Even though they made a wink at the audience at Screenjunkies when they were asked about it. - It's impossible to prove they actually saw it.
^^^
Again - He should ONLY BE REIMBURSED if he can PROVE they expressly used his ACTUAL IDEA (in the game) for Star Trek Discovery. 'Similar' and 'Coincidentally' isn't AND SHOULDN'T be enough for a payout because sorry, his idea ISN'T all that novel/unique in the first place given all the coverage 'Tartigrades in space' received over the years in the news media.
Only if they can prove his ideas were used, which so far I've seen none.
Nobody thinks that. We are arguing he has no case that his material was infringed, unless he is able to prove it, which you don't want him to have to do.
So you want the law to assume that everyone has seen every video on YouTube, read every website, and looked at every game on Steam? Yeah, it doesn't work that way. You need to prove that the person you are claiming took your idea had access to the idea. Because how else could they possibly have taken it from you? You keep making comparisons with huge cultural touchstones, and @Locutus of Bored has very clearly explained the difference. You still have to evidence access for the big ones, it's just different.
This really shouldn't be this controversial: If you're a writer for an episode of a television show, and you invent something significantly for it - you should be re-imbursed. Sometimes they re-use ideas from outside it. That's when episodes have that little "based on a story by..." in their title sequence. That means a little amount of money went to the guy coming up with the original idea the show used.
The question is wether his work was accessable, and how similar it is. His work was publicly displayed.
The actual interesting stuff are the similarites: And for my likening, it's not just "Tardigrade in space". It's "exactly 2m-supersized blue sparkling Tarigrade used as a FTL-device in space". Which is eerily similar.
Again: This guy would never own the show or anything. In fact, I don't even think it would warrant a single "based on a story by..." being retroactively included on the DVD-release of the show on a single episode or something. But yeah, I DO think they own him money. Not much, by far not the amount he's demanding. But not paying him at all is CBS playing corporate overlord, which isn't great either.
The question is wether his work was accessable, and how similar it is. His work was publicly displayed.
The actual interesting stuff are the similarites: And for my likening, it's not just "Tardigrade in space". It's "exactly 2m-supersized blue sparkling Tarigrade used as a FTL-device in space". Which is eerily similar.
Again: This guy would never own the show or anything. In fact, I don't even think it would warrant a single "based on a story by..." being retroactively included on the DVD-release of the show on a single episode or something. But yeah, I DO think they own him money. Not much, by far not the amount he's demanding. But not paying him at all is CBS playing corporate overlord, which isn't great either.
It's not impossible. You depose the writers, animators, directors, and producers of The Lion King under oath about their knowledge of Kimba the White Lion and whether that influenced their filmmaking process. Some might lie, most would tell the truth. Some might say they were aware of it but it played no part in the creative process.
Tardigrades doesn't even merit that level of involvement though because you have to show that the opportunity and time existed in abundance to have it influence Discovery. Kimba was popular and widespread and had been around for decades, Tardigrades was not.
So it's okay to steal ideas, as long as the ideas come from a place small enough to "not even merit that level of involvement" for the courts?
Yeah, that's what I was getting at in the beginning....
There's no evidence that they took the guy's idea.
That is what the court is asking for: evidence.
We already have evidence that the man sized Tardigrade part was a coincidence.
Try reading what he actually wrote. The point is it should be easier for the Tardigrade plaintiff to prove it because it isn't about trying to prove exposure to a cultural meme through depositions, but proving specific access to a specific source. Pretty fucking damning if a CBS office IP was accessing your website, for example.
We really don't. We have words from the producers that they originally intended to have the Tardigrade be a human. Offered in the same interview, where they said they "always" planned for the Klingons to have hair from the first episode onwards. That's not "evidence". You can believe that, and built your opinion on that. But for a court? That's not enough.
It comes from this article, October 2017
https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/s...lingons-after-trek-cbs-all-access-1201887652/
No mention of Klingon hair at all.
If CBS still has the concept art or documents from the period where this was originally conceptualized they can prove it.
I think you may be in a little deep. You're arguments really don't make any sense.
Essentially you're stating: How dare the court ask for evidence?
You keep saying this as though the use of someone else's idea is a given here, but that is the very dispute the court are being asked to address. You're assuming the outcome then claiming any process which doesn't lead to your assumption is inherently unfair.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought there was a question of timing.
That is, I though t I read that by the time the DSC creative team (and the public) had public access to the Steam Game's thematic ideas, DSC was already running with their similar ideas.
If that's true (and someone please correct me if it isn't) , then it seems the game makers would need to prove that CBS and DSC somehow secretly gained access to information about the game prior to DSC's creation.
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