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'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

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Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#141

Post by Cyberdog »

__david__ wrote: post #70
skocznymroczny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Humvees become the worst vehicles in the game because of balancing reasons? If I were the owner of the brand I'd be pissed. Even worse in case of other vehicles like racing cars. Imagine a racing game in which Porsche cars are slowest and break more often than other cars. You wouldn't want your brand to be associated with that, even if it's a videogame. Or imagine a completely broken game with popular car. Bi…

Imagine a car racing game where when you crash at 100 MPH your car doesn't take on any cosmetic damage… Oh wait, that's all of them , because car makers can't bear the thought of their precious IPs all banged up. It's one of my pet peeves about car racing games with real cars.

Yet another reason why Burnout Paradise, which contained cars inspired by real-world cars but different just enough to not invite lawsuits, was one of the best games ever - the manner in which the cars got deformed from simple dents to complete destruction was a major feature of the game. I'm sure they saved a good deal of money not having to license all the brand names too.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#142

Post by Talanes »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #123
mnemonicsloth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly anybody remembers nowadays but Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively). So the endpoint of nobody remembering that your IP is IP has been reached in practice. And more recently there's the PC, which became detached from IBM in record time.

> Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively) There's no real reason to think "fridge" is shortened from "Frigidaire" as opposed to "refrigerator".

And plenty of reason to think against. The "dg" sound doesn't come through in "Frigidaire" at all. It does have an actual letter "d" present, but with the "i" in between the sound becomes entirely different. Compare to refrigerator, where the "frige" portion of the word slants easily to rhyme with "ridge."

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#143

Post by sh1mmer »

duskwuff wrote: post #23
save_ferris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I think Humvee saw a company making a truckload of money and felt they had a right to some of it given that they own a major vehicle that's used in the game. I could easily see an ego-maniacal CEO or founder getting pissed that he's not getting paid for something he feels entitled to. Maybe they're seeing how pro athletes are licensing their likeness to games and thought they could make a compelling argument for…

The flow is typically in the other direction, though -- companies pay for placement of their products in media, like movies and video games, as it's seen as a form of advertising.

This makes me think of the report [1] that Apple won’t let movie bad guys have iPhones, or apparently soda companies won’t let you see branded soda cans being thrown in the trash in movies.

It does seem to me like it shouldn’t be in the public interest to allow brands to fully control representations of their products in media since that clearly provides a mechanism to stifle critical representations (or even simply accurate ones that don’t match the desired corporate image).

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#144

Post by Semaphor »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #117
cosmodisk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

Interesting, I've never heard jeep used like that in the U.S. Actual jeeps are pretty common here though.

For most of my life I didn’t know Jeep was a brand. It’s simply what you call most off-road vehicles in German. And looking at Wikipedia it seems like that is the case in most of Europe.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#145

Post by sgtnoodle »

cosmodisk wrote: post #107
solinent wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo... I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure. I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a m…

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

There seemed to be tons of Jeep brand SUVs in Italy when I was there in October. Our rental car was one without asking for it, and there were four in a row at our hotel in Amalfi. Maybe they are popular in tourist areas?

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#146

Post by jussij »

tinkertamper wrote: post #4
smabie wrote: post #2

I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to me that many companies pursue legal action that is against their own interest. Surely, Humvees in CoD could only help the brand, no? Moreover, the fact that they don't even sell any consumer products in the first place makes the entire suit even more dubious. The use of Humvees in CoD is going to sow confusion among the military purchasing officers and the…

I also don't know what I'm talking about, but I think one of the core responsibilities of a trademark owner is that you establish a history of defending it. I heard once that if you don't do that you risk losing control of your rights to that property. Any smarty pants on here able to confirm/set me straight?

From the page:

As for proximity of the products, while AM General may license out the rights to depict Humvees in games and toys, the judge isn't impressed because that's not its central purpose as a business.

I also may not know what I'm talking about, but that statement by the judge suggests that in this case, AM General was not so much interested in protecting it's trademark, but rather more interested in enforce some sort of licensing payment.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#147

Post by skunkworker »

__david__ wrote: post #70
skocznymroczny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Humvees become the worst vehicles in the game because of balancing reasons? If I were the owner of the brand I'd be pissed. Even worse in case of other vehicles like racing cars. Imagine a racing game in which Porsche cars are slowest and break more often than other cars. You wouldn't want your brand to be associated with that, even if it's a videogame. Or imagine a completely broken game with popular car. Bi…

Imagine a car racing game where when you crash at 100 MPH your car doesn't take on any cosmetic damage… Oh wait, that's all of them , because car makers can't bear the thought of their precious IPs all banged up. It's one of my pet peeves about car racing games with real cars.

Any cosmetic damage? You haven't played Forza Horizon recently then. While crashes aren't BeamNG.drive-level disassemblies, they do scratch up and can make cars undrivable (especially with full damage turned on).

Any they have a fairly comprehensive list of manufacturers and no cars are immune to damage in the game.

https://forza.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Manufacturers

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#148

Post by thaumasiotes »

Talanes wrote: post #142
thaumasiotes wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively) There's no real reason to think "fridge" is shortened from "Frigidaire" as opposed to "refrigerator".

And plenty of reason to think against. The "dg" sound doesn't come through in "Frigidaire" at all. It does have an actual letter "d" present, but with the "i" in between the sound becomes entirely different. Compare to refrigerator, where the "frige" portion of the word slants easily to rhyme with "ridge."

I can't go that far. What country are you from? I would have said the second syllable of "refrigerator", and the first syllable of "Frigidaire", both obligatorily rhyme with "ridge". There's no alternative.

"Frigidaire" should only really differ from "frigid air" in terms of prosody.

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#149

Post by [deleted] »

tinkertamper wrote: post #4
smabie wrote: post #2

I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to me that many companies pursue legal action that is against their own interest. Surely, Humvees in CoD could only help the brand, no? Moreover, the fact that they don't even sell any consumer products in the first place makes the entire suit even more dubious. The use of Humvees in CoD is going to sow confusion among the military purchasing officers and the…

I also don't know what I'm talking about, but I think one of the core responsibilities of a trademark owner is that you establish a history of defending it. I heard once that if you don't do that you risk losing control of your rights to that property. Any smarty pants on here able to confirm/set me straight?

[deleted]

Re: 'Call of Duty' wins First Amendment victory over use of Humvees

#150

Post by Supermancho »

hannasanarion wrote: post #133
Supermancho wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to use it at all in a movie or tv.

Apple can't stop you from using their products in a movie. Trademarks only protect brand confusion, nobody is going to watch Transformers 17: Age of Voltron and think that the whole movie is an apple product because a robot turns into a iPad. It's just a case of "if you don't use our product this way, we won't do cross promotions or pay for product placement with you anymore"

Apple does not do product placement at all, so licensing fees make no sense for Apple. I stand corrected.
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