^^^
The problem with your whole argument here is how you frame it. Why?
You expect that a court of law should automatically assume what one side (The Plaintiff) says MUST be true; and the Plaintiff's case shouldn't be penalized by a court just because his claim is hard to prove.
U.S. Courts DO NOT (and never should) work that way. They Plaintiff is saying the Defendant did something and ASKING FOR DAMAGES (read Money) as a result. To get that he has to prove (in civil court) by a preponderance of evidence that what he claims was in fact done by the Defendant (CBS).
The Defendant CBS claims they didn't and the Plaintiff's claims are false.
The Court ISN'T supposed to believe one side over the other - and it's encumbent of thee one making the allegation to have hard, verifiable evidence that what they claim is in fact true.
So far, the ONLY thing the Judge is asking for is one/some piece of verifiable HARD evidence that isn't: "Well, the info was up on a website on the internet for YEARS, so someone who worked on ST: D's initial development MUST have seen it; and we're sure once they did - THAT sparked the idea for the show....
^^^
That ISN'T HARD evidence. It's 100% supposition (and hearsay) on the Plaintiff's part.
And for the one person the Plaintiff has so far put forward:
- She joined Steam after the vote on the game was concluded (and still no hard evidence she even saw the game info on Steam.)
- She joined the ST: D writing staff AFTER the Tartigrade aspect was already publicly acknowledged as being part of the series.
[/QUOTE]
... So, yeah, again, NO HARD EVIDENCE that his idea was in any was appropriated for the Tartigrade concept of ST: D. Therefore, until the Plaintiff can show some hard evidence that CBS 'stole' his idea, there is NO CASE.[/QUOTE]
Everybody here pretends this guy doesn't have solid evidence. He has. He has published his own creation on a very popular website, that was accessable from everywhere, and a suspiciously short amount of time later, CBS throws their own product out there, that has the exact same content, both in concept
and peresentation. Yes, Tardigrades were in the news for some time. "Mansized blue sprakling Tardigrade in space as a means of direct FTL-travel" was not.
That's a
suuuper unique concept. So it's not as if when the court actually orders some documents to be handed over, that suddenly every game designer of SF games can do the same. I doubt there are
any games with SUCH similarities out there! I just think - personally - that anyone having
this amount of similarities has crossed the threshold to warrant an actual investigation. An investigation that needs documents being handed over. Because anything else would be completely unreasonable: This guy alone DOES NOT have subpoena power, or police powers or can just research the Internet usage of an entire company on his own. Asking him to do that - to deliver information a single individual without support from authoritives simply
can't ever deliver - is completely bonkers and unreasonable.
No, if CBS sued you they'd have to go through the same process, the difference is that it would be incredibly easy to prove that you knew about Star Trek before creating Space Trek. You post on the Trek BBS for starters.
Here is the thing though: I don't post here under my real name. You'd need to cross-reference that. And that you can only do via the justice system, or illegal (which means it can't be used in the court). That means if the court denies even watching at this in the first place (like it does in this case) - nobody can
prove that I saw Star Trek! I didn't have a television when I was younger, and I don't have one now. Prove that I saw it. And to say "well, duh, it was in cinemas, there was publically widely available advertisements for it" -
so were for this guys game on the internet
.
Really, this whole thing can pretty easily be solved by the court ordering CBS to hand over a single early development document of the show. Which CBS definitely has - for legal reasons. Without that, the case is simply unsolvable. And - for my tastes - these two Tardigrades are close enough to warrant the court
actually looking into it.
That apparently this guy has some
super inept lawyers is of course not helping him -
at all. The truth is, we're all people, and if a judge simply gets fed up with your lawyers, for them demanding preposterous damages and annoying everyone with completely overplaying their hand - a justice might be nudged and simply try to close the case as fast as possible.
But still - the matter at han is that this guy has some really, really credible allegations against CBS - allegations that would have long been settlent if he had an actual other media company backing him up - but there are simply limits to the information a private person can collect: And so far, he has collected everything an individual could, and everything he collected supports his claim. Ordering him to collect even more - something he simply
can't find out no matter what, simply because he's lacking the gouvernment ressources to do so (recreate the entire dataflow inside a million dollar company) - feels like they are just searching for a thing he can never, ever deliver in the real world, and then order him to deliver exactly that. Not because it's reasonable. Or even possible. But because everyone just wants to shut the thing down.
On a side note: This is really not the hill I want to die on. I don't even care about this guy personally! By all accounts, he seems to be very... problematic. I just don't like it when large corporations farm ideas to use as their own without re-imbursing the people that originally came up with them. Which sadly happens all the time, and in much worse and more obvious cases than this one (Creators of Batman anyone?). It's still just sad every time it happens.
