That sums it up nicely.
Case dismissed! Discovery and Tardigrade game "not similar"
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Generally true but not always.
There is actually a concept in the courts of "affirmative defense" which basically says that even if everything the plaintiff says is true I'm still not guilty because of this reasons. The catch on affirmative defense is that the burden of proof then shifts to the defendent to prove what he has now laid out of why he's not liable even if plaintiff's arguments are completely true.
best examples are things like statute of limitations, fraud, self-defense, insanity. If defense says SoL means case should be thrown out, defense has the burden to prove that by providing say documentation for what the event occured and so forth.
Don't see it applying at all in anything going on here, but in a case LFIM has going there will likely be an affirmative defense of lack of jurisdiction/inappropriate venue.
As I've said previously, I am more than willing to entertain Abdin's claim that someone stole his idea if he can provide evidence. He has yet to do that and I'm not certain he can. Despite what some passionate individuals may believe, Abdin has had more than a wide berth to prove his point by the Court. He's been given numerous chances to do so. He has piss poor legal counsel and honestly not much of a case outside of a lot of supposition and hearsay. At this time, he needs to be able to prove that somehow someone from CBS accessed his page on Steam. He is working to obtain the records from Steam itself, which is exactly what he needs along with the IP records from CBS and its subsidiaries. There is no way that there is going to be a smoking gun without digging on his attorney's part. Since the attorney seems to be unable to follow simple court filing guidelines, I don't know if he's going to be able to prove this.
Well yeah - I think the problem here, is that at this point the discussion of what is reasonable and what not depends entirely on how each individual sees the similiarities already presented.
Like, if I try to make money by selling a "Mr. Spork"-action figure with big, yellow letters that say "Space Trek" - I think we can all agree CBS could sue my ass, and wouldn't be handcuffed to personally investigate when in my life I personally had actually used my television to watch Star Trek or accessed their YouTube-page to watch trailers for Star Trek. That would be ridiculous, and completely impossible to pull off for CBS, right?
This case is obviously not as clear cut as that. But to say there's nothing there would be equally foolish.
Like, if I try to make money by selling a "Mr. Spork"-action figure with big, yellow letters that say "Space Trek" - I think we can all agree CBS could sue my ass, and wouldn't be handcuffed to personally investigate when in my life I personally had actually used my television to watch Star Trek or accessed their YouTube-page to watch trailers for Star Trek. That would be ridiculous, and completely impossible to pull off for CBS, right?
This case is obviously not as clear cut as that. But to say there's nothing there would be equally foolish.
Hmmm...
He and his attorney still have to prove their case. And they've been given a fairly wide berth to do so.
That is a lot more similar then what's been presented by Abdin. He still has the burden of proof. Discovery is there to help get inforation and documents but it is not there to be a fishing expedetion which is what he is trying to make it. To move to certain levels in the legal system you have to provide evidence to support your claim. He hasn't been able to to my satisfaction.
However at this point the question is has he presenteed enough for the court to decide to let the case move forward. The bar at this point is really pretty low in terms of what is needed to get past an initial motion to dismiss but you don't get to continue and hope you can find evidence later on. This isn't TV court where somebody walks into court at 11:59pm with the smoking gun.
Exactly.
There is also the possibility that CBS to 100% directly lifted the idea from his trailers, without doing any changes or iteration themselves, but the court decides that this Tardigrade is not clearly enough "defined" as a character that is's not copyright-capable (is that even a word?).
That would actually be the much more interesting question, where exactly that line between an "idea" and an "expression" of said idea goes. Because that's the part of this case that's really not clear-cut. But I could totally understand neither CBS nor the court actually wanting to go even near that type of debate.
That would actually be the much more interesting question, where exactly that line between an "idea" and an "expression" of said idea goes. Because that's the part of this case that's really not clear-cut. But I could totally understand neither CBS nor the court actually wanting to go even near that type of debate.
But. That. Would. Need. To. Be. Proved. And. Its. Unlikely.
The concepts are not nearly the same. The similarity ends at the idea that there is a tartigrade that can travel faster than light. That's it. And that's not a copyrightable idea. Because its really, really broad.
There is also the fact you are talking about a human sized version of a real animal. If he created tardigrades from scratch that would be one thing. So even IF cbs lifted the Tardigrade there would still be a question of if it could even be copyrighted.
He has a bunch of legal questions to get through to win but up first is there is any evidence cbs copied it in the first place or if two people happened to both watch cosmos and get the idea of a human sized tardigrade.
I'd say it should be pretty obvious.. In this case the use of a tardigrade is like the use of a wizard or better yet a dragon. Game of Thrones and Earthsea both have people who ride dragons, abdin suing CBS is like Le Guin suing George R. R Martin because his books also have people riding dragons in it. By your reasoning, Le Guin SHOULD be able to sue Martin.
and the dragons in GoT were also hatched from Eggs... Le Guin should be calling Abdin's lawyer
There are an awful lot of shows with blue/white UI on transparent displays... somebody started that specific representation. I know, that's an unfair comparison, or is it?
Tardigrades are in the pop culture consciousness. Yes, human sized and teleportation are more specific, but they are natural directions to go.
I am nearly always going to side with the little guy versus the big corporation, but here I don't see how that's makes any sense.
Tardigrades are in the pop culture consciousness. Yes, human sized and teleportation are more specific, but they are natural directions to go.
I am nearly always going to side with the little guy versus the big corporation, but here I don't see how that's makes any sense.
And then Anne McCaffrey should have been able to sue both of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern
I say just throw all three of them into a ring chuck in some weapons, turn on the amok time music and let them go for it.
"The Battle of the Three Dragon Writers"... special Hell In the Cell Match at this year's wrestlemania.
And because it's dragonrider-themed, all of them will proceed to sue WWE separately, right as it's being filmed.
"Riding dragons" is a pretty well-known concept, especially since "flying" is already in a dragon's nature, and it certainly has the right size to ride on one.
This case is much more specific, with multiple changes to the "original" idea (the real-life tardigrade) that are both super specific and also not in the beasts original nature or obvious to think of.
Like, say, a mouse in brass uniform riding a small, sad, flying elephant wearing a yellow hat, using his super-sized ears as wings, in a circus setting.
Is that specific enough, that if someone else writes a story with the same thing happening (but that's otherwise not connected to "Dumbo"), that these elements would already be copyright-protected?
I honestly don't know. But that's a good analogy to how I see the current case.
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Let's say Discovery's plot had this:
A naked man gets hugged by a Tardigrade and is able to travel faster than light.
Absolutely! That would absolutely merit the case. That's how specific you're getting in your example. With this case its:
A large space Tardigrade travels helps humans travel faster than light.
That's just a concept. And its pretty broad. So broad it can take place either by the tardigrade hugging an individual or being able to move a large starship by hooking into the ship's systems or numerous other ways that can be imagined by dozens of writers who want to tell stories about interstellar tardigrades.
Do you see the difference between the two?
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