Legal help needed

FlyingTomahawk

Sorry to hear about your troubles.
This seems to be common practice these days. They register all kinds of names and URLs even stuff that doesn't exist yet. Just so that you have to pay them later to release that name or brand if you want it. Very sly way of doing business.
These people are scum, the only thing they do is think how to piss on other peoples hard work so that they can enrich themselves.

Those registration offices should really rethink their policies and stop people from registerering brand or names that they are not directly connected or associated with. These things should not happen in the first place.

Worst case shut down everything, rename, rebrand, register everything and I mean everything , every single pixel. Then re-launch.

caver01

What I don't understand is their angle. If they are trying to profit from selling something called RetroPie and then RetroPie rebrands, they have to do it all over again. It seems like you would want to leave well enough alone if you don't want the product to pivot underneath your marketing effort.

hooperre

His uploaded project on GitHub admits he isn't the original creator of EmulationStation.

Capeman

Contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they sometimes offer pro-bono legal help to open source programmers who don't have the resources to pay for legal help. https://www.eff.org

Or, drop the E from the project name and submit a copyright for RetroPi... i've never really understood the connection to baking.

detron

if there is a separate donation point for this legal issue let me know. I would like to help. may not be much, but if a lot of people give a little, I know it would help.

detron

so, the same description for both Retropie and Emulation Station. and not even a good one.

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edmaul69

What you should do is try to crowdfund to pay for an ip lawyer. Then if you get the emulationstation guys do the same to pitch in you could make it cheaper and go after him for both.

mediamogul

Wow, talk about an all-around scumbag. It looks like he even got tech support from you guys when he was just getting started with RetroPie...

http://blog.petrockblock.com/community/members/eddywebs/forums/

edmaul69

@mediamogul in the legal fight this could be a good thing. It is proof that it is not his work.

Fruitybit

Donated again, I hope it will help- kinda makes me think this should be in help and support!) now we can give something back I hope.

mediamogul

None of this should even be necessary. At my core, I'm actually a pretty cynical person and it's served me well over the years, but when I see an absolute new low in human behavior, it still gives me pause for thought. The lengths people have gone through in the recent past to steal a piece this project's identity for their own personal gain has consistently been disgusting, but the attempt to outright take the branding identity through legal channels absolutely blows my mind.

I don't believe in karma as being some sort of magical force, but I do believe that people who move through life with no regard for other people ultimately find themselves in a situation where they have no one willing to support or tolerate them and many even actively working against them to make their life difficult. If this is to be believed at all and that his actions here represent a pattern of despicable behavior, then I have no doubt that Aditya Rawat will find himself on the losing end of life before long.

romain

Hi,
I can't really help you with this issue, just to say that there are some much crooked people around the world that I loose day after day my faith in humanity. But there are they are always people willing to help and support and that's a good sign that, the world is not totally insane after all. The only advise I could dive is to contact Ebay and Github to see if they can banned him because he tries to overcome your rights with this project. Also, a publication on slashdot.org could be cool to inform the world and let the geek worl know about your current issue and maybe help. Good Luck! I love Retropie and really hope this idiot will have what he deserved.

Capeman

Start loading up the official img with a ton of pirated roms, then forward all the lawsuits and take down notices to the guy who owns the copyright.

Lyle_JP

@Capeman It's a "burn it all down and salt the earth" tactic. It would destroy RetroPie with it.

Capeman

@Lyle_JP I know, just being facetious

pjft

I am deeply saddened to hear about this. Let me check on Monday if there's anyone I know that could help here. Also, EFF is definitely a good lead. And I'm all up for trademarking it in Europe if more domains would help. Just say the word.

Lyle_JP

Well, the next time anyone who bought a pre-built pi with games wanders in here and demands support, I know whose email address I'm giving them.

obsidianspider

Based on the trademark filing he has a product website, and wow, this guy has no shame in blatantly ripping off others' work for profit.

EctoOne

@obsidianspider wow, his faq even links to the Retropie.org.uk wiki to tell which systems are included.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

mediamogul

He has his custom images up for download if it would help to look at them. I don't feel right about linking them, but the highest version is 4.2.1 if you can wrap your brain around that absurdity.