3 ms·
Larping.org imports and resells foam arrows. Global Archery also sells foam arrows, and is suing for trademark infringement and patent infringement. According t
by jimrandomh 11y ago
Larping.org imports and resells foam arrows. Global Archery also sells foam arrows, and is suing for trademark infringement and patent infringement. According to this article, the trademark infringement claim is based on the name "Larp Arrow", which sounds pretty generic, but more importantly is actually only being used by some unrelated seller. The patent claim is based on patents dated after the company that made the arrows started making them, and Larping.org doesn't make them anyways, they only resell them. Larping.org launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance their legal defense, and Global Archery demanded that they shut it down, shut up, and pay them all the money raised so far.
A sane court system would be able to investigate and dismiss the IP claims quickly, before they forced the defendant to incur any significant costs. The US courts, however, are not a sane system, especially where intellectual property is concerned. It is a system where people believe, first, that if you don't spend a lot of money on lawyers, then the merits won't save you. And it's a system where defendants almost never get to recoup the money spent on lawyers.
So we get this. When patents appear in the news, it's always a mean plaintiff trying to bully a meritorious defendant out of a market, or extort a payout. This is very different from the stories our lawmakers hear about, which are about patents protecting virtuous inventors from theft by big companies--a scenario which, as far as news headlines are concerned, never ever happens.
- tptacek 11y agoNo, the trademark claim is based on the defendant's deliberate use of Global Archery's "Archery Tag" trademark to market their own product. Their use of that trademark is probably fine (you're allowed to compare your products to those of other firms), but it's not correct to suggest that Global Archery is somehow enforcing a trademark on all of "larping".
- dragontamer 11y agoIndeed. I'd like to assume that people are smart enough to explicitly call out other companies and piss them off. Selling your imported arrows as "Better than Archery Tag" is just asking for trouble. The actual mechanics where the man is getting sued for patent infringement is likely an unrelated lash-out by "Archery Tag". Archery Tag just saw this guy deliver the "first blow" since he was purchasing Google Ads explicitly using their trademark without permission.
- chris_wot 11y agoActually, I just read the lawsuit - the trademark infringement is over "Archery Tag". The ad in particular they have highlighted is a Google ad, where they say they are better than Archery Tag. Which isn't trademark infringement in any way.
- ergothus 11y agoI know only what I've read in the article re:this case, but I don't see enough to know the merits. In particular, if YOU import something, you are responsible for ensuring it doesn't violate a patent, as I understand it. (See: recent Dollar Shave Club lawsuit). That the German company did this "first" is relevant for overturning the patent, but that doesn't invalidate the case until said patent is dead, regrettably. I can't tell from this article what's going on with enough detail, so it may or not be egregious behavior from either party, or just a "reasonable" legal dispute.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoIf Global Archery is aware of prior art, they are engaging in malicious prosecution and are abusing the court system. They should be slapped with penalties.