Legal help needed

Rion

@hunterk posted this link on the Libretro forums.

Interesting read with answers from 8 different lawyers.

There is also some reddit threads if you just search for "retropie legal help". Some with god info and some with more personal attacks and hateful comments. Like always.

Fruitybit

@mediamogul said in Legal help needed:

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.

Reading reviews and such on what appears to be the domain registrant, Domains by Proxy, I hope karma comes around sooner rather than later for him.

DanielD

Found him on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/usr/retrogamingconsoles?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

one semi good thing is he is giving everyone selling retropies a trademark violation, so he can be the only seller lol
hes got over 500 sales

adamspc

Wow.

Let us know if donations are needed for legal help.
I gave a some just to show my support.

retrogamingcon

Looks like there is a lot of head on topic and I am here representing the retrogamingconsoles

The trademark is not hurt or jeopardize the project but a weapon to protect from the commercial users violating the rules and jeopardizing the project.

The takedowns been done only against the folks who were loading the roms illegally and making retropie a piracy project.

What trademark is all about.

A weapon against anybody:

loading roms illegally and selling it online for profits jeopardizing the project itself.
-Not respecting the non-commercial clauses and scarping the non commercial cores from end project.
-Not respecting the GNU principals and codebase when the project is in a commercial product.
-using the project commercially and not providing a official support, taxing the forum.

What trademark is NOT about:

to be used against makes who make profit and share their work around the project.
to be used against the interest of the project
take over the freedom and future of the project

The commercialization also plans to donate percentage of profits to the project directly and hire developers to add features to the project.
All contributions will remain open source as long as the founders keep it that way.

Commercializing and bastardization of the project has already been going for months, all this is to protect the movement and not act against it.

Happy to have a educated conversation without the hate speech and blames and work on common grounds to help project this movement.

Long live retropie !

DanielD

@retrogamingcon
Did you ever consider contacting the developers first?

looks like you got a couple of hundreds of sales on ebay, any of that profit went to developers?

adamspc

@retrogamingcon said in Legal help needed:

What trademark is all about.

A weapon against anybody:

loading roms illegally and selling it online for profits jeopardizing the project itself.
-Not respecting the non-commercial clauses and scarping the non commercial cores from end project.
-Not respecting the GNU principals and codebase when the project is in a commercial product.
-using the project commercially and not providing a official support, taxing the forum.

alt text

This is your eBay feedback. No illegal ROMS?

flop

What about sending him "some" e-mails XD?

UDb23

@retrogamingcon Appreciate that you posted and explained your point of view.
As you registered something created by hard work of others, if your intention is/was to protect and support the project, it would be expected that you involve the creators of Retropie before registering. Just personal opinion.

Lyle_JP

@retrogamingcon said in Legal help needed:

Looks like there is a lot of head on topic and I am here representing the retrogamingconsoles

The trademark is not hurt or jeopardize the project but a weapon to protect from the commercial users violating the rules and jeopardizing the project.

The takedowns been done only against the folks who were loading the roms illegally and making retropie a piracy project.

You are selling pirated roms. Your eBay feedback proves it.

I hope your lawyers are good. It's not us, but a few companies in Japan, that you might really need to worry about.

retrogamingcon

@DanielD The cash flow on the entire commercialization remains negative ( due tooling in china and IP protection costs), the case that you see on the website was originally tooled by us however in china there is no such than as IP amongst the manufacturers unless you involve legal grounds beforehand our cases got copied in no time. The effort is to start doing in the coming quarter.

retrogamingcon

@adamspc The ebay account was taken over by us by, I can't say which particular buyer got so but I can confirm there is no copyrighted game on the end products at the time of speaking.

retrogamingcon

@UDb23 We did reach out the founder in early times on however based on the contact it was self evident that owners had no interest in commercialization at that moment.
See reply to @adamspc

adamspc

@retrogamingcon
What you did was smart. You sold them with ROMs until the trademark went through, and now that you got the trademark you've obliterated the competition and you're selling them legally. It's clear that you had everything ready for when the trademark was approved.

You know what you're doing. We know what you're doing. I hope you honor your word about supporting RetroPie monetarily.

ruckage

@retrogamingcon said in Legal help needed:

@UDb23 We did reach out the founder in early times on however based on the contact it was self evident that owners had no interest in commercialization at that moment.
See reply to @adamspc

And so you think that somehow gives you the right to just steal the name and commercialize it for yourself? You really are the lowest of the low - the mental hoops you must have jumped through to justify this to yourself are astounding.

retrogamingcon

@adamspc not just monetarily but to make it feature rich. Ofcourse there is profit motive however the goal is make retropie the name for maintaining the heritage of video gaming and hopefully independent gaming down the line. The plan is to not have the project to end up like XBMC forced to name as Kodi. This is the commitment.

retrogamingcon

@ruckage If you don't consider the motives not giving back , we are not taking anything from the founders. Its definitely bad news for those who would.
Again educated conversation only.

ruckage

@retrogamingcon said in Legal help needed:

@ruckage If you don't consider the motives not giving back , we are not taking anything from the founders. Its definitely bad news for the those who would.
Again educated conversation only.

Are you serious? You've taken the name and work of others and passed it off as your own - you truly are unbelievable. The fact you have the gall to even say you are 'giving back' is amazing. Exactly what have you 'given back' as I see nothing.

UDb23

I think @retrogamingcon should clarify and find agreement directly with the developers.
That's the point now.
Educated conversation should always be the case, regardless of each other's opinion.

retrogamingcon

@ruckage Please understand this requires some time to prove because till now there was no way to determine if the investments would be viable till the trademark has been secured again we have no interest in project being in the harms way or violate any of its right. A simple ebay search would reveal that very well.