Stan’s NoTubes awarded 5th patent for Bead Socket Technology rim design

People are going to hate on this press release I’m sure but I for one think that it is very professional for Stan’s to provide transparency in their legal matters. It has been cool to watch a small company in upstate grow into a very influential one over the years.

What essentially is happening… that’s amicable… is that the best selling Blunt….if it wasn’t labeled as a ‘licensed’ design, was going to be fought in court and then bye-bye patents altogether. It was in Stan’s best interest to arrive at a solution, as Velocity is NOT a small company easily bowled over like some brands might be.

Folks often say “well they have to defend their patents or they become invalid”… and that’s wrong. Simply not going after X entity who might be infringing on a patent or trademark or copyright doesn’t render them public domain for all. Many companies pick and choose wisely who they go after.

Take copyright for example… Harmony Gold, a tv/film production company acquired the international distribution rights for the re-broadcasting of the original Japanese anime series, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which became the first third of their original creation english-language Robotech cartoon series from Tatsunoko Production which had been granted the rights as part of their workshare agreement with Studio Nue who actually created the Show. Harmony Gold would later zealously launch lawsuits claiming they owned the copyrights to all the original animation, mecha designs, characters, concepts etc. But largely they only tried to bully companies on equal or lower footing than them financially. They went after FASA for example over Battletech, which had also gone right to Japan to Studio Nue in the first place to license some of the artwork. Studio Nue is who ACTUALLY holds the copyrights to Macross (as proven by a Japanese Court), and Tatsunoko thus never owned them to sell to anyone else.

Thus, Harmony Gold isn’t actually authorized to be enforcing any sort of copyright on the Macross images but nevertheless they still try and do so…in US courts anyways. But again, only against companies they think they can win against usually. When they tried to bully Hasbro Toys… Hasbro went to the trial stage and a Judge dismissed HG’s suit with prejudice. Likewise, they didn’t even threaten a suit against Microsoft, who owns the digital rights to everything Battletech/Mechwarrior, and who produced several of the best Mechwarrior series PC games, because again, Microsoft has the money to pay lawyers to go thru a full trial…where they’d also likely win.

They’ve now gone after Piranha Games, HareBrained Schemes, and Jordan Wiseman (one of the original founders of FASA, which itself no longer exists) over their supposedly copyrighted images yet again. So far the latest case is in the pre-trial phase. HG is aware of the Japanese court ruling over who owns what of the original studios but basically dismisses it claiming it doesn’t apply to them at all. A US judge likely will not think the same thing though, when its pointed out all their copyright claims are based on an agreement with a Japanese company 30 years ago, which fraudulently sold them something they didn’t actually own.

One of the things they’re claiming this time, is that their copyright includes derivative artwork… so not only are the Mecha designs of the Macross itself apparently covered, but so are any other mecha designs which resembled the original artwork. Again based all on an invalid copyright to begin with.