EA finally taking on Tim Langdell?

[Hohum]

Saw this article earlier on gamesindustry:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-takes-up-edge-trademark-fight

Seems that Langdell has been making legal threats to EA ever since they released Mirror's Edge, as his company (Edge Games, formerly Softek) managed to trademark 'Edge' and various other combinations - the edge, gamer's edge, etc. EA initially just ignored him, so he conveniently updated his website with an announcement for a new game in development (that is unlikely to even exist). Can you guess what it is? Yep, 'Mirrors'.

http://www.edgegames.com/

Basically, if you don't pay royalties for the word 'edge' to his company, he'll threaten you with legal action. He is the reason for Soul Edge on PSX becoming Soul Blade, for example. Also, notice how the company logo has the same font style as a certain well-known games publication? That's no coincidence. I don't know if EDGE magazine paid him royalties or not, but he does try and piggyback off anything successful. Somehow he even got Datel to concede and pay up, and if you check the movies/tv section on the site even 20th Century Fox licensed his trademark for a film...

Anyway, the article on gamesindustry.biz actually contains a link to another, which discusses how a recent developer came into conflict with him:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-edge-of-reason_7

Quite an unpleasant trademark troll as far as I'm concerned. British too! How embarrassing. Anyway, just thought some of you might find it interesting.

[JamesS]

http://chaosedge.wordpress.com/ has a load of information about this (and is probably the source of a lot of the stuff in EA's filing).

[Hohum]

Had a flip through that site you've linked. I'm amazed that he's been able to get away with that nonsense for so long! Associating his company with products that are nothing to do with him, modifying a trailer of a game produced by another developer to look like it's one of his company's products, stealing artist content from deviantart to advertise non-existent products... shameful. From my point of view, he's just a total fraudster.

[nakamura]

What a crock. This guys site is full of crap anyway.

[Guts]

How the hell can this ****er trademark a common English word, like "edge"? Let alone extort money from people using it? Can you also trademark words like "gun" or "shadow" or "darkness" and then demand money when people use those in videogame names?

[Neon Ignition]

Hopefully this'll be a time where EA uses it's powers for good and crushes him in court then counter sues

[Dogg Thang]

He's clearly a tosspot. So very rarely do I root for the corporation but, like above, I hope they crush him. The whole fiasco with the Edge game on the iPhone/iPod Touch amazed me in that this man had been doing the same thing for so long and managed to do it relatively quietly too.

I do wonder what effect those people bending over for his Edge lovin' will have on this. He calls Edge magazine part of his brand on the About page, for example. They obviously made a deal with him at some point, as have others, and I would have thought that each one of those deals strengthens his claim over a basic word in the English language. Hmm... something doesn't sound quite right about that.

[Leon Retro]

I hope some renegade cop tasers him until he forgets about the whole 'Edge' thing. Either that, or flog him within an inch of his life on national television.

[Darwock]

Wow, what a ludicrous situation. Shows that there are some fundamental problems with the copyright laws if you ask me...

I bags the word "war", anyone who wants to use it has to pay me money!

[Herbalizer]

I've just acquired the rights to 'Tim' and 'langdell'.

This guy is an idiot, he bullied the guys who made 'Edge' on the iphone, it was taken off the store, it may be back now though. How can you copyright a common word though.

If thats the case i'll just go through the dictionary and copyright every word in there.

[charlesr]

I expect some hacker kids from 4chan or whatever will be all over his site soon.

[PeteJ]

I believe he claims to be the father of videogames too, even though nobody remembers him ever doing anything.

Apart from being a muppet. Let's hope EA crush him.

[Dogg Thang]

Well he did make Bobby Bearing, as he likes to remind people of. Remember Bobby Bearing? Anyone? The game that Marble Madness ripped off? Okay so Marble Madness came out first, but still... And that iPhone game Edge was clearly a clone of Bobby Bearing that nobody remembers and is nothing like Edge.

So you can surely see, he is the father of videogames. We all have this man-thing to thank for our hobbies. And those of you in the industry should thank him for your careers too, if he hasn't already tried to get you to send him a percentage of his salary.

[FelixofMars]

I love the fact that the game sold by his company seems to be nothing more that a pirate version of a Polish developers game with his name stuck in the paper based manual. This guy is worse than the Limbo of the Lost guys, how he has carried on so long un-noticed is beyond me.

My guess is he didn't realise how big the support where for the I-phone guys and now its unravelling his other misdemeanour's.

[Golgo]

What a ****. Is this how he makes his living? Maybe I'll copright 'RIP' so I can get it chiselled off his gravestone come the time.