Did CBS Steal the Tardigrade Idea?

[cultcross]

Interesting and relevant article on the action taken against Six Feet Under in similar circumstances. In short, if you cannot prove direct copying, the test of 'access' plus 'substantial similarity' is a very tough one. In the case of Axanar, for example, access was easily accepted by all, and 'substantial similarity' was, to be frank, obvious and easy to prove. Element after element was directly lifted wholesale from copyrighted work without any attempt to disguise it.
This case is far from the same scenario. Even access would be hard to prove given that it has never been distributed.

 

[rocketdave]

I have some degree of sympathy for this guy. It must suck to work really hard on something only to see some big corporate entity exploit an idea that you thought you were going to use first. For reasons others in this thread have already gone into plenty of times already, however, I find the possibility that the tardigrade thing is anything more than a coincidence to be highly unlikely, plus the other parallels he tries to draw really feel like he's grasping at straws.

Glancing at some comments, mainly on YouTube, it's sad how many people unquestioningly accept Abdin's claim that his idea got stolen, simply because (or so it seems) they'll desperately latch onto anything, no matter how tenuous, that bolsters their hatred of Discovery. IMHO, they have to be pretty deluded to think that this lawsuit has a chance of succeeding.

 

[PiotrB]

This twitter thread has posts e.g. by user @rocdisjoint showing how silly this idea, that producers stole concepts from this game, is.

 

[Noname Given]

I have some degree of sympathy for this guy. It must suck to work really hard on something only to see some big corporate entity exploit an idea that you thought you were going to use first. For reasons others in this thread have already gone into plenty of times already, however, I find the possibility that the tardigrade thing is anything more than a coincidence to be highly unlikely, plus the other parallels he tries to draw really feel like he's grasping at straws.

Glancing at some comments, mainly on YouTube, it's sad how many people unquestioningly accept Abdin's claim that his idea got stolen, simply because (or so it seems) they'll desperately latch onto anything, no matter how tenuous, that bolsters their hatred of Discovery. IMHO, they have to be pretty deluded to think that this lawsuit has a chance of succeeding.

What : "idea you were going to use first?"
https://www.popularmechanics.com/sp...ly-animal-that-can-survive-in-space-17069978/

What's so special about tardigrades?
Tardigrades are a class of microscopic animals with eight limbs and a strange, alien-like behavior. William Miller, a leading tardigrade researcher at Baker University, says these creatures are remarkably abundant. Hundreds of species "are found across the seven continents; everywhere from the highest mountain to the lowest sea," he says. "Many species of tardigrades live in water, but on land, you find them almost everywhere there's moss or lichen." In 2007, scientists discovered that these microscopic critters can survive an extended stay in the cold, irradiated vacuum of outer space. A European team of researchers sent a group of living tardigrades to orbit the earth on the outside of a FOTON-M3 rocket for ten days. When the water bears returned to Earth, the scientists discovered that 68 percent lived through the ordeal.

^^^
See the bolded part. Tartigrades in space wasn't a new or novel idea in 2014.

Also, the Tartigrade in ST: D didn't have the innate power to travel the mycelial network. The SPORES allowed that. The Tartigrade was just one (of a few) species that could interface with the Spores in that fashion. Humans required genetic modification (which wasn't impossible, but it was illegal in the Federation, but Stamets did it against orders anyway; and became the conduit.)

My point: Unless the game has all the above elements (or hell, just the Spore element) - then YES, the game designer might have a case. BUT, if the game just says Tartigrades can travel/warp space by themselves (IE an innate , then no, ST: D's version of Tartigrade space travel isn't ripping off anything,

And again, the fact Tartigrades can survive in space has actually been known since 2007 - 7 years before the game was conceived; and 10 years prior to ST: D. <--- So that 'idea' is/was hardly unique.

 

[rocketdave]

What : "idea you were going to use first?"

I probably could have worded what I wanted to say a little better. To be clear, obviously, Abdin did not come up with the idea of the tardigrade in any way shape or form. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but even though science has known about tardigrades for a long time now, it seems like it's only been within the past few years that they began to really enter the public consciousness, I assume what happened was that Abdin saw Cosmos or read some article and naively thought something along the lines of, "Here's a relatively fresh concept that science fiction hasn't exploited yet," and now he's basically upset that Star Trek beat him to the punch.

Just because we haven't really seen tardigrades in a lot of popular media up until recently, it doesn't mean that the first person who decides to do something with them (which apparently wasn't Abdin anyway) suddenly owns tardigrades. It's kind of like if one of the first science fiction writers to decide to write about black holes were to declare that anyone else who dared write about black holes was ripping off their intellectual property.

I agree that most of the other elements don't seem that similar. Sure, they both have giant tardigrades, but nobody owns the concept of "giant," and unless you're Ant Man, if you want to feature a microscopic animal, it seems natural that you'd have to make them bigger. I remember when I first started seeing ads for Cosmos and they showed the tardigrade, I thought it was someone's design of a huge alien. Also, the way they travel through space seems totally different. I certainly don't recall Ripper on Discovery mounting naked people from behind. Sorry, maybe everyone else is too polite to mention it, but that seems like such weird imagery to use to promote your game.

 

[seigezunt]

I doubt it, but this lawsuit is sure proving a treat for people who hate the show for entirely unrelated reasons.

It will join the pantheon of nonsense like Axanar that they can bang on.

 

[BillJ]

I doubt it, but this lawsuit is sure proving a treat for people who hate the show for entirely unrelated reasons.

Those folks who think this lawsuit is going to do anything to change the show, are in for a MAJOR disappointment.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

It's like people think this lawsuit is going to result in Rick Berman assembling a super-team consisting of Mike Okuda, Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach and the ghost of Michael Piller to create a post-nem series with 90's production values.

 

[Refuge]

I don't believe people think that at all. Why?? It's more like this guy created a game and he sees Discovery has the same themes he recorded first. Meh.

 

[Noname Given]

It's like people think this lawsuit is going to result in Rick Berman assembling a super-team consisting of Mike Okuda, Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach and the ghost of Michael Piller to create a post-nem series with 90's production values.

^^^^
What's "The Orville" got to do with this?

 

[seigezunt]

It's like people think this lawsuit is going to result in Rick Berman assembling a super-team consisting of Mike Okuda, Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach and the ghost of Michael Piller to create a post-nem series with 90's production values.

"Coming Up Soon in a special edition report from Midnight's Edge"

 

[Jedi_Master]

It's like people think this lawsuit is going to result in Rick Berman assembling a super-team consisting of Mike Okuda, Herman Zimmerman, Rick Sternbach and the ghost of Michael Piller to create a post-nem series with 90's production values.

It's not?

*Sadly puts away homemade TNG audition tape

 

[Tuskin38]

This is an interesting read

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/201...e-star-trek-discovery-plagiarism-allegations/

 

[CorporalClegg]

This is an interesting read

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/201...e-star-trek-discovery-plagiarism-allegations/

Which just reiterates what many have been saying since the beginning of this thread.

 

[Krandor]

The Tardigrade looks pretty darn close to the spore drive. All the rest of the complaint seems to also match up. Its hard to see all that is being reviewed as being coincidental..

You are looking at it in the way he wants you to (which is the job of the plantiff) but when you take it apart a lot dosn't match up.

The character who looks like Burnham is a communications office not a science officer. Not much similarity in the actual character.

The character who looks like Tilly and is from another nation that is a rival of yours. Sound anything like Tilly?

Then we get to the ones where we really plays loose and fast. There are two characters in the game what he claims look like Stamets and Culber. He also has a gay couple in the game. Did you assume the stamets and culber lookalikes are the gay couple? Nope they are not. The "culber character" is gay but his BF is long disrtanse and the "stamets character" is an NPC that you control with mental manipluation and insults. Sound like stamets?

The game does have a botonist but it isn't the character that looks like stamets.

So really almost nothing about the characters fit the characters in DSC except a superficial resemblance and is it really reasonable to think they simply stole the look of characters from a game to give to casting but changed basically everything else about them? Of course Aras's argument is they changed all this stuff to make it less obvious they stole from his game but IMO the differnces are so great that argument doesn't hold up.

 

[Krandor]

I have some degree of sympathy for this guy. It must suck to work really hard on something only to see some big corporate entity exploit an idea that you thought you were going to use first. For reasons others in this thread have already gone into plenty of times already, however, I find the possibility that the tardigrade thing is anything more than a coincidence to be highly unlikely, plus the other parallels he tries to draw really feel like he's grasping at straws.

I do feel bad for the guy because even if it was all coincidental (which is what I believe) if he releases his game 6 months to a year from now people will assume that he copied the idea from Star Trek. Somebody may see the game and go "oh that sounds like that thing on discovery" and after he has worked on this for years that really has to suck.

 

[Marynator]

So really almost nothing about the characters fit the characters in DSC except a superficial resemblance and is it really reasonable to think they simply stole the look of characters from a game to give to casting but changed basically everything else about them? Of course Aras's argument is they changed all this stuff to make it less obvious they stole from his game but IMO the differnces are so great that argument doesn't hold up.

I think also, if you're going to do something like that where you steal ideas but switch things up a little to make it look like you're not copying, you'd go the other way around, right? What I mean, is you'd keep those peoples' personalities and traits, but change their appearances. So maybe you've got someone like his communications officer, with a similar backstory, motivation, and personality, but instead make her a redheaded guy. To me at least it feels really ludicrous to think they're going to go "Oh, he's using a black woman on his cast, what a lovely and novel idea, I think we should totally steal that! But let's make her totally different, so no one suspects we're stealing his idea to have a black woman," if I'm making sense?

And then imagine in casting, say someone else applied for Stamets' role and was really awesome, but he's Asian, are they going to say "Oh no, we can't hire him, we're ripping off looks from this obscure game, we need a super pale blond guy." I mean I just don't see what sense that makes, having a diverse cast can't be a sign of stealing from a game, I'd think myself those characters' personalities will be much more important, because casting's really going to be more about finding talent based on your ability not that you've got really strangely specific physical qualities for no logical reason.

Oh dear, I really apologize for my ranting here, I just feel that whole argument is totally ridiculous.

 

[Krandor]

I think also, if you're going to do something like that where you steal ideas but switch things up a little to make it look like you're not copying, you'd go the other way around, right? What I mean, is you'd keep those peoples' personalities and traits, but change their appearances. So maybe you've got someone like his communications officer, with a similar backstory, motivation, and personality, but instead make her a redheaded guy. To me at least it feels really ludicrous to think they're going to go "Oh, he's using a black woman on his cast, what a lovely and novel idea, I think we should totally steal that! But let's make her totally different, so no one suspects we're stealing his idea to have a black woman," if I'm making sense?

And then imagine in casting, say someone else applied for Stamets' role and was really awesome, but he's Asian, are they going to say "Oh no, we can't hire him, we're ripping off looks from this obscure game, we need a super pale blond guy." I mean I just don't see what sense that makes, having a diverse cast can't be a sign of stealing from a game, I'd think myself those characters' personalities will be much more important, because casting's really going to be more about finding talent based on your ability not that you've got really strangely specific physical qualities for no logical reason.

Oh dear, I really apologize for my ranting here, I just feel that whole argument is totally ridiculous.

Compltely agree. That was really my point. When you look at the side-by side pictures as anas puts out and hear things like "the game has a botinist and the game as an interracial gay couple" it makes you think certain things. However when you really look at the stuff in real detail the whole thing really falls apart and as you pointed out so well the idea that would just steal the looks, lock themselves into having to hire that kind of actor/actress, and change everything else just plain makes no logical sense.

Anas is doing a good job of presenting his case in a way that gives a certain impression but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

So in the end his case really only has a giant version of a real life animal.

 

[STRenegade]

This lawsuit reminds me of when the developers of PUBG sued Epic Games for making a Fortnite a copy of PUBG. Which is funny since PUBG never created the idea of Battle Royale in the first place and their game was base on mods of other games anyways.

 

[Tuskin38]

This lawsuit reminds me of when the developers of PUBG sued Epic Games for making a Fortnite a copy of PUBG. Which is funny since PUBG never created the idea of Battle Royale in the first place and their game was base on mods of other games anyways.

PUBG was created by the creator of some of those mods.

But I do agree the lawsuit was silly.