|
In case you missed out on exactly who Tim Langdell is, or what he's been up to, I recommend reading this summary post by Derek Yu.
The dust from that whole thing settled a couple weeks ago when mobigames' EDGE was re-released on the App Store. Then, after getting news that he had threatened mobigames again just recently, Kotaku turned up this gem:
Word Mark EDGE OF TWILIGHT
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game programs
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 77748665
Filing Date June 1, 2009
Current Filing Basis 1B
Original Filing Basis 1B
Owner (APPLICANT) EDGE Games Inc CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 530 South Lake Avenue Ste 171 Pasadena CALIFORNIA 91101
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
According to Kotaku, Edge of Twilight is slated for a 2009 multi-console next-gen release, published by SouthPeak Games, formerly indie publisher GameCock.
Tim Langdell is still on the IGDA board of directors, for reasons that I cannot fathom no matter how hard I try. Also, his biography on the IGDA site still contains a large number of disputed claims, including:
"Tim has worked on almost 200 titles over his career to-date": Tim Langdell's companies have been involved in the distribution of nearly 100 titles, 95% of which were shipped before 1985.
"is currently working on new games for the PS3, Wii, PC and Xbox 360": Unverifiable, as no screenshots or videos or trailers for these projects exist, though many games that the Edge Games site claims to have shipped for these platforms definitely do not exist.
"has spawned such well-known EDGE branded ventures as EDGE Magazine (published by Future), EDGE game PCs (made by Velocity Micro)": While the details of EDGE Magazine's licensing agreement are still unknown, there are public court records proving that EDGE game PCs were not spawned, but were forced to license Tim's trademark after becoming their own successful business.
"He is co-founder of AIAS": His name is not mentioned on either the AIAS's website or the AIAS wikipedia entry, but it could be a consistent typo.
"was responsible for the first televised game awards show": Would love to know what show that was!
The ire that Tim incited when he took action against Mobigames was further inflamed when his history of trademark trolling and abuse was brought to light by various researchers. Many claimed that Tim was not merely defending his generic "EDGE" trademark, but was going farther. Tim Langdell, it has been claimed, waits for any company who makes any game with the word "edge" in the title to become successful, and then attacks them with outrageous threats against their livelihood. When Tim Langdell registered a trademark for "EDGY" on May 16th, during the mobigames debacle, many thought this was proof of his ill intent. Some, such as fellow board member Tom Buscaglia, rejected it out of hand for unknown reasons. The remainder of the IGDA board was silent on the matter.
I would love to hear some explanation from some board member about how this latest action by Tim Langdell could possibly be conceived of as reasonable and legitimate for a standing Director. I would prefer to hear from someone other than Tom Buscaglia, as his responses tend toward misdirection, typoes, ultimatums, and other embarrassing rhetorical tools and/or failures. However, as he is the sole board member who has ever, at any point, deigned to actually respond to this matter in any way, shape, or form (deleterious as that response may have been), I suspect we don't have much of a choice in the matter.
|
You're on the Board. Langdell is too. His actions are putting the IGDA in a bad light. You ask him politely to step down. He refuses. What do you do now? You can't remove him from the Board unless you have cause: that's what the bylaws say. Cause would be if he violated the code of ethics of the IGDA. I'll quote the code of ethics for you.
"Each member of the Board of Directors shall:
1. Act with honesty and integrity.
2. Exercise loyalty to the IGDA, acting in the best interests of the
organization and taking no action that would undermine or
impede the activities of the IGDA.
3. Adhere to high standards of professional conduct, in particular
regarding meeting attendance, preparedness, objectivity, mutual
respect, courtesy, and candor.
4. Comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
5. Maintain the confidentiality of all proprietary and competitively
sensitive or valuable information of the IGDA.
6. Respect the principles of free competition as embodied in the
antitrust laws.
7. Support the protection of the assets of the IGDA, including
intellectual property.
8. Encourage IGDA staff to alert the Board of Directors to potential
misconduct or violations of law without fear of retribution. "
You could maybe, MAYBE make a case that he violated points 1 or 2. 6 would not apply as he is not breaking any antitrust laws, he's just taking advantage of existing laws in a pretty (IMO) scummy way. But points 1 and 2 are pretty vague. Intentionally so. How do you PROVE someone is acting without integrity? How do you prove someone is undermining or impeding the actions of the IGDA? If doing something unpopular and causing a bunch of people to leave the organization undermines the IGDA, then I guess every board member ever has caused that to some extent.
Mike Capps, on the other hand, wanted to kill the activities of the Quality of Life SIG. He has said, after his Board tenure was over, that that was one of the reasons he ran for the board. See this Joystiq interview for my source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/22/joystiq-interview-epics-michael-capps-responds
-to-accusations/ ("But yes, I'm familiar with that [IGDA QoL white paper]. In fact it's one of the reasons that I joined the Board in the first place. [...] I thought that the efforts of the IGDA SIG task force were really misguided.")
Now *that* kind of activity is the sort of thing that you can at least reasonably bring up as a violation of #2 of the code of ethics. Tim's activities are not so cut-and-dry.
So if you're on the board, and Tim is doing this stuff, tell me: what do you do?
Honestly, I want to know! I've been thinking a lot about how I would respond to this situation as a board member. Maybe make a public statement saying I don't support it, I suppose. But then, that might make it really hard for me to get shit done on the Board. I dunno. It's a tough question.
1) Tried to register a trade mark that copies exactly what someone else mentioned during discussions which should have been private and confidential.
2) Failed to pay someone for work done and then ran off to the US before legal action could be taken to recover that non-payment.
3) Tried to register a trade mark (Edge of Twilight) that has already been registered in another country and combined with his previous trade mark trolling it goes to show how he is attempting to extort money from other's hard work.
A board member can make sure the membership knows of his activities then cause a membership wide vote to be held on the issue. I've no doubt the result of that vote would prove that Tim Langdell has been acting without integrity and against the best interests of the IGDA.
Martin, individual board members cannot call a general vote of the IGDA on an issue. I believe that a majority vote of the Board can call a general vote, but I'm not 100% certain on that.
Publicly post something along these lines: "Speaking only for myself, and not on behalf of the IGDA board, I feel that gaming the trademark system in order to extort money from developers is bad for competition, bad for the industry, and bad for our customers. I obviously cannot make a finding of law against Mr. Langdell or anyone else (as that is the exclusive duty of the courts), but for the sake of protecting the Association, I urge Mr. Langdell to voluntarily step down from his position as an IGDA board member until these accusations have been cleared up. Again, I'm speaking only for myself; these comments do not necessarily reflect the views of the IGDA board as a whole."
Ideally, this sort of message would be posted to the IGDA forums, or to one of the official IGDA staff blogs, and ideally there would be at least two board members who felt strongly enough to post such a message.
here's one of Tim's contemporaries. These guys really get me fuming.
Now, I'm not a big fan of my old employer, but this is total BS.
Could be the board fears a lawsuit.