so is this going to happen.

even i might want to play.

been awhile but PR coming.

Probably not, yet another thing in TW's long history of starting but not finishing things.

Just what the hell do you think I am doing? It's called "Trademark Protection." The name has NOT been used without attempts to protect it for years. All of the prior uses of it were BY PERMISSION. Think before you post bucko.

Sorry dude, not to start smack on this, but technically you're wrong on all fronts. I suggest you contact an intellectual property attorney before making legal claims.

What you're debating is a matter of facts surrounding a law, and for that the argument would go to court. Since unregistered trademarks cannot get extended damages, and at no point has money ever been exchanged to play this turny, there can be no actual damages claimed. Are you really telling me that someone would spend thousands of dollars to try to defend a several year old TW "trademark" in court just to get an injunction?

Next you have the problem of identifying the real mark holder. Since it's never been used in actual commerce there's no way to determine who out of the group of people promoting the older BOTEs would actually be considered the mark holder. That argument alone could tie someone up for a year. I mean can a trademark even stand when it's not registered and never used in actual commerce where money or consideration of any sort is exchanged? Would that really constitute an unregistered trademark? That's a big gray area since there can be no commercial misrepresentation issues.

Next you have the problem of constant defense. The last BOTE had nobody coming on the forum saying "you need our permission" and I strongly doubt you (or anyone) can provide a written, dated and notarized document that gives the last BOTE crew permission to use the mark. An email would not suffice since such things lack authenticity, assuming of course there might even be that. Prior to that there was no BOTE, but yet nobody tried to defend the mark. Lack of commerce regarding a mark does not defend not protecting it, even in years where such commerce may not exist you still need to maintain the mark's authority.

No where did we see "BOTE, an unregistered trademark of xxxxx" in any material prior. If it was a registered mark you could claim maintaining registration was sufficient, but as it is not... you can't. You cannot just arbitrarily decide that suddenly something is an unregistered trademark when it was never treated that way before. It has to be done from the start of operations. Generally speaking a period of 3 years is sufficient to win on this, but even if not... the fact that the term "BOTE" was used as a generic last year without any attempt to defend it is sufficient evidence to warrant a legitimate discussion about the mark's continued enforcement.

You are welcome to take the counter position of course, on all of these issues, as that's expected. But you cannot legitimately deny the claim to my side of the argument, and even if you could... no court would. Which is sufficient to say we could get past summary judgment attempts on your part (altho I can come up with a few reasons to have it dismissed in my favor right out of the gate), and would therefore go to a hearing.

Given the legal costs to defend things across state lines, the fact that money has never been a prior factor and you've got no chance to collect damages, the fact that such a case might be considered frivolous on your part, the whole thing is ridiculous on it's face. Which is why most people just ignored and/or laughed at the notion, but I'm not a fan of half-baked internet lawyers making wild claims about things they clearly don't understand.

The correct approach would not be to claim some unsubstantiated legal right, but to make it a simple case of tradition and claimed moral authority. Such as "In the past, so and so used to always do the BOTE, I don't feel it's right that they would be overlooked on this case, so I feel either you should get their permission or just use another name." Since most sysops here aren't complete a**-holes you'll probably get a "yea, you've got a point, I'll just change the name since it really doesn't matter" and that'd be that. But instead you tried to make it a legal issue, which is absurd... bad manners and just plain dumb, almost worthy of a smack-down of judicial proportions.

Well folks, I really wanted to run BOTE 2008 for you. I felt like BOTE 2007 got fracked up, and I’m sure most of the players agree with me, but it looks like BOTE 2008 has found its share of controversy already thanks to the Ghost you all love to hate.
I was really hopeful that Zoobar, Mavrick, or Macahan would contact me directly so I could talk with them, and make sure of their feelings, rather than just accepting a quote posted from someone, claiming to be quoting another. I’ve never been one to take my information second hand, especially in a forum where I could easily just type a message, and call it a quote. I could just type a message in the forum and say Zoobar gave me permission to run BOTE, but I’m not the type to do so. I’m sure that had I been able to talk to them, they would realize my intentions were good, and that I can indeed run a clean tournament. But I don’t have old ties to this game. And the folks mentioned above have failed to return my hails even though I’ve seen Macahan online in ICQ and tried multiple times. I guess everyone is in SG’s pocket. It's hard to get permission to run a game, when nobody seems to be around to ask.
I know most of you are waiting to form teams till you hear if I’m hosting this or not, and I’m REALLY tempted to move forward with it. But I also know that SG will drag this argument out for months regardless of whether he plays or not.
I hate to hand SG a win to this argument, and it hurts my pride a lot to say I’ve decided it’s not worth running this tournament amid the controversy.
It’s due to stuff like this that I’m losing my joy of this game. I was never a great player, but I did run a great site. I’m finding most of the players I enjoyed playing with are retiring, and I’m growing impatient of the new players whining. It seems there are only two areas in tradewars forums that are still active; game bangs, and smack.
I’ve loved this game since the early 80’s when I played. I thought it would go forever. But I’m sick of it now. I’d bought a used computer to host BOTE 2007, and honestly watched the garbage truck drive away with it on Monday. It made me sick every time I looked at that computer. I wanted it gone. I’d never started the computer since I shut BOTE down last year. Rest assured, BOTE 2007 is interned in some landfill waiting for some archeologist to find in centuries and take a glimpse into what we used to call fun.
For now, I’m going to try to rebuild my TWGS site. I’ve spent some time getting my website functioning again, and I’m working on getting some interesting and new games up on my server.
I offer many thanks to the many people who stood behind me and supported me during this argument. But for the good of the game, I feel it best to put the argument to bed.
Maybe in the near future when I get past this pit in my stomach, I’ll look into developing my own tournament where I don’t have to seek permission of players that never look into the game anyway. I’ve also been offered some tournaments from others that I’m considering as well.
Fly Safe, Live Long, or at least till extern.


RP

Just a suggestion that if it's so important to obtain permission to run this title in the future, it would be nice if said owners would make themselves available to people such as myself to obtain permissions. I do thank you for your attempts to contact Zoobar for me. I just wish he or Mavrick would have answered my hails. Would have been nice to be able to state my intentions and not have the only information their recieving about this game being from a one sided ghost. I'm quite sure he never mentioned that mistakes I made in the signup process of this game were corrected within hours of my original post. And of course he has his own opinion now of what type of sysop I am. So I'm sure he also doesn't represent me in the nicest way.

Old school TW and its fricked up mentality strikes again.

RP,

I am sorry that things worked out this way, as you know, I was looking forward to a completed RP BOTE. I also am glad that the old BOTE is in a landfill somewhere, hopefully it can be buried once and for all. Let us know when/if you decide to host a tournament, and I get a team there.

I just hope certain parties are as good at starting BOTES as they are as stopping other people from having them...

Wow, a lot of reading on my return to civilization...

RP, I hope that you won't let this discourage you and you get your site rebuilt. We SysOps tend to make mistakes, and it takes time to move past them. However, lessons are learned and we move on.

I agree with the fact that BOTE should stay in it's original format. If it had been a certain way for years, any change to that format would warrant contacting the original person(s) involved to make the change. It works the same with hosting game edits created by others. If you want to make a change to the edit, contact the creator and outline what you want to add/change, then post that info so others know there is a change to that edit. Same principle all around.

I do not agree with how this situation played out and I feel that it could have been handled differently than the way it was. You made a post to host a new draft BOTE and although the arguments on changing BOTE's format are valid, the method to convey the arguments could have been better thought out. However, what is done is done. All you can do now is learn from it and move forward, or allow yourself to be driven out of hosting all together. You will find that some may agree with you, some won't, and some just have nothing to do but complain. You can't please everyone.

Find some aspect of the game that others have not done and make it your own. All of us hosts are unique in that aspect. UTW for example has a large player base. Outpost-4 is home to TradeWars Academy. RiverCity is home to some unique and great edits, as are some other sites. ICE9 is home to some great building games. The point here is find something about the game that you can expand on and make it part of your site.

Something I've learned years ago, and I'm an old SysOp. Don't run tournaments. It is not worth the hassles, frustration, flames, etc. Perhaps years ago there were sites that could run tournaments with no issues, but now it seems there are always some "issue" that comes up. In the long run, it is not worth the time spend trying to make something work only to have it go up in flames. If some host can successfully run a tournament, then good for them and the players. Perhaps what the community could use is someone that will host tournaments only and not host regular games as well. This could help to eliminate any controversy that may come up. If the tournament is a bust, they don't stand to loose their player base because of issues. If you or I host a tournament and there are issues, not only are we flamed, but our site suffers too. It's not worth it.

No matter what, at the end of the day, it's just a game.

The tournaments are nothing more than highly advertised game bangs - they have no special significance. If you had multiple perma corps playing then you might have a tournament, but since the composition of the corps change with the wind, there appears nothing special about the tournaments I have seen.

The only difference between a tournament and a normal bang is the flaming of sysOps and allegations of cheating that the tournaments breed. If you look at the recent tournaments and the resulting posts all you see is negative information that degrades the game, sysOps, and players. Even the attempt at planning a tournament has resulted in more of the same BS type of whining accusations.

We can kill the game pretty easily when new players read the type of crap that goes on by people who have played the game for a long time. Why get involved with a game that should be fun when all the new players see is the type of attitude that the tournaments seem to feed? No offense to pre-teens, but the actions/posts in regard to tournaments are what I would expect of a spoiled 12 year old.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

ZooBar and the Black Knights came up with the edits......but since Maverick was and will always be the ceo of the Black Knights.....he gets credit for this game....

But since I am the last active Black Knight still playing.....You have our permission to change the edits as you see fit RP.....