New Maycar Arduboy clone has struggles

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Post-post-scriptum :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

(I was at a kid’s bday party and couldn’t google more details but now I can)

https://www.heerlaw.com/moral-rights-copyright-law

So that latest one is called “moral rights”. Now, this is a bit of a stretch because it’s usually used when a piece of art is used in a way that could hurt an author’s reputation (eg: if it was used by some morally reprehensible groups).

Realistically here as far as the packaging goes the best filmote could hope for (in my opinion and from what I read. I am not a lawyer, I just like to read up on cases.) after fighting in civil court is the store will put a block-out sticker on top of the screen to hide the game.

eg:
image

For trademark (“Press play on tape” logo could quality) you need to actively sell a product, service, or be registered (and even registered you need to trade something or you can lose your trademark, you can’t just sit on it).

But in this case too without proof of financial tort or damage to reputation best that can be hoped is they slap a sticker on it.

Judges don’t like to have their court time taken up by trivial matters where damages can’t be demonstrated so that wouldn’t play in the complainant’s favor.

And worse, if you don’t sell a product/service and don’t have trademark registered the store could register the “press play on tape” trademark themselves and say “He’s not selling anything, we are, look here on this Maycar box. We’re disputing the trademark”. I doubt they would but more silly things have been done.

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Obviously I am not taking the issue further. AS I said earlier, I was hoping they would offer me a couple of the kits to shut me up :slight_smile:

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I was hoping to reply to this yesterday, but events conspired…

They are indeed different. I wasn’t commenting on Filmote’s situation, or considering the two related, I was merely wondering if the presence of the word “Arduboy” on the packaging (which I vaguely recall being properly trademarked, though it’s possible it may be the logo rather than the word that’s trademarked) had any legal implications.

I suspected @filmote was probably not very serious about it, but just in case anyone else finds this information useful…

I suspected that’s probably what you were thinking of.

I don’t know about elsewhere, but one of the moral rights conferred by Australian law is the right of attribution (specfically by the “Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000”, Division 2), so in terms of moral rights Filmote could probably demand that he and Vampirics be properly cited. (Obviously, this may not be the case for other countries.)

How copyright pertains to screenshots and footage of a game is actually quite a topical issue that’s been affecting streamers quite a bit. (Though not as much as music copyright.)

It’s quite a complex issue though. Whether software, graphics and sound are counted as separate entities or aspects of the same entity isn’t entirely clear (partly because a lot of copyright law has yet to acknowledge video games as a unique art form as they do with cinema), but if they are separate then they’d have to be licensed separately.

This is one of the reasons I’ve taken to licensing graphics separately from source code. (And why I try to make it clear that my logo is the only part of my very few Arduboy games that I retain all copyright to.)

If the Press Play on Tape logo were licensed with a creative commons licence with a non-commercial clause then this could be claimed as a breach of the licence, since Maycar are using the image in a commercial capacity.

The nice thing about licences is that you can pick and choose who gets what rights. You can provide a non-commercial licence as the default and then if someone wants to use the work commercially you can negotiate the terms of an exclusive licence that allows them to use it commercially (e.g. in exchange for royalties).

I think copyright would be a better thing to lean on in this case rather than trademarks, but I will say that had the games been sold, e.g. via itch.io, then it might qualify as a trademark.

In this case it would probably be too late for that, but other people may wish to look into that aspect, particularly if they’re trying to develop a sort of ‘brand’ under which they publish games, and may in future wish to sell their games.

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(Only an idea)
Those prices for the Arduboy at Jaycar are crazy high! (At least to me). I’d possibly be interested in actually making them (Electronics, PCB and Case) and perhaps selling them for something a bit lower. Though that would depend on how many I’m willing to make and whether or not that’d be allowed.

The costs being:
PCB $1.50
Display $7.50
Pro Micro $15 (I could possibly find some cheaper ones)
x5 Push Button ($0.30 each) $1.50
Case $1

Shipping (Australia only) $9-$15

Total $35.50-41.50
(Though I’d possibly charge a bit extra for labour)

If anyone’s interested or could guide me in a direction to start this please let me know. Though don’t expect me to start it for some time.

(And of course this is in the interest of spreading access to learn coding and about Arduboy, I’m all about giving kids a good start to try this kind of stuff)

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hehehe :+1:

Yeah, I was just going over some of the common rights options and the limits I personally know for all the creators in the forums.

I’m not surprised Jaycar wouldn’t send units, there’s too much bureaucracy involved in large corporations to make a deal like that.

Making a deal with a small seller is easy, sometimes a few emails to agree to a small deal like that is all it takes legally and the seller is usually covered under “in good faith” even if the person saying “hey you’re using my art” turns out to not be the real author.

But when dealing with large companies (I’ve worked with Walmart, Samsung, Acura, Google, Amazon to name a few) simply getting what is clearly a typo fixed in the text they gave us can involve going through their legal department and 10 more people in various other departments taking weeks to get it all confirmed.

Going through all the red tape, all the departments and manager approvals (and maybe a bit of investigation to make sure it’s not a scammer) to send 2 units for a logo/IP licensing deal on the product packaging can cost more in staff time than the profit they planned to make and might just as well pull the product from the shelves.

Those two units could cost them upward of $50K internally to send when all is said and done all because it involves the legal dept. :stuck_out_tongue: Unlike say, sending a replacement unit which only goes through customer service and they have pre-approved guidelines for dealing with those cases.

It really gets this silly at a big biz scale :grin:

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