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Like at the end, when Selene says she is going to be hunted. Why is she going to be hunted?

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Posts: 107 | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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There's been a tremendous amount of discussion on our boards (and many others) about the merits of our suit against Sony Pictures, Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment. We're very flattered by the many words of support from well wishers. We're also a little surprised by the knee jerk reaction some folks are having to this legal action that we're taking to protect what we believe to be infringements of our copyrights. While I won't be engaging in a lengthy forum debate, I do want to address some of the key concerns than many people have expressed. Please understand that while we're in pre trial, it's difficult for me to be entirely candid. Certain phrases and words must be used, or I'll compromise our greater legal efforts. I take a mild risk by posting a letter like this, but I want to shed a little light on the events and information that lead us to the decision to prosecute.

First of all, White Wolf is not an overly litigious company. We enter lawsuits only rarely, and then, only when we feel we have no other choice and a likelihood of prevailing. There have been a few instances where we've sued, and a few instances where we've been sued. Our track record is pretty good, and we generally don't start something we don't feel capable of finishing. In the case of Underworld I did contact Sony in the Spring of this year and advised them that based on the initial Underworld trailer we believed that Underworld may contain some of our intellectual property (IP from here on out). I requested a copy of the script so we could review it in more detail and get a clearer picture of the situation. Sony moved me around to a couple of different people and a few emails and voice mails later I found myself ignored. Now we had to be careful, because when a big company like Sony thinks they're going to get sued, there's a bunch of legal precautions they can take to make a lawsuit ridiculously expensive for a small company like White Wolf. So rather than start shaking spears we waited patiently for the requested screenplay but it never came. Two months later we got the screen play from the Copyright Office and began reading. What we saw in that screen play was a overwhelming similarity to both our *expression* of the World of Darkness and to Nancy Collins' short story The Love of Monsters.

Now before those well meaning JR lawyers out there begin screaming again that White Wolf doesn't own Vampires and Werewolves... we're not claiming to. No one can copyright an idea - only the *expression* of an idea. We do feel that the World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse contain unique expressions of these subjects. When we read the Underworld screenplay we found what we believed to be a nearly identical expression of our unique kinds of Vampires and a nearly identical expression of our kind of social dynamics between these two opposed societies. People have pointed to Wolfman VS Dracula recently. That's fine, but it misses our point. We're claiming that we created a complex world that supports advanced social structures of both Vampire and Werewolf societies. That each of these creature types have a unique blend of common myths and new ideas and that Underworld hues too closely to these same unique blends. Some of our elements were inspired by folklore, some by more modern offerings and still others of these elements are wholly original contributions by our creative staff. It is our combination of these elements that is unique, and that expression is protectable, we believe, under copyright law. We also found a few special game terms, like Abomination, showing up in both our books and their screenplay, and we feel very strongly that the screen writers were exposed to, inspired by and actively incorporating elements of our IP into their movie. We feel our case is further strengthened by what we perceive to be overwhelming similarities between the Underworld script and Nancy's short story, The Love of Monsters, which is also set in the World of Darkness. The movie switches the genders of the characters, but otherwise we found the sequence of events to be almost identical between her story and their screenplay.

The merits of our case are (in our opinion) fair and reasonable, and we wouldn't be in litigation if we didn't sincerely believe that this film borrows heavily... too heavily... from our unique expression of these popular ideas. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our freelance community and, yes, this fanbase to protect our intellectual property from third parties who would attempt to usurp those unique qualities and represent them as independently created works. Our livelihood as a publisher and rights owner depends on it. I sat in court yesterday and listened to their attorney assert that the writers had never heard of the World of Darkness, and then we showed the judge an article from the San Diego comicon where the creators admitted that they were aware of White Wolf's games from their internet research. Well... which is it? I suppose time and legal discovery will tell the truer tale.

Fortunately the Judge felt that our case had enough merit that he's expediting the discovery process and shortening it to 30 days. This is very good for us. That will allow us to get a hearing, and hopefully an injunction before the larger portions of Underworld's merchandising roll out, and help to protect many of the areas we've already taken, or plan to take, the World of Darkness brands into.

Many forums were ablaze with similarities between the trailer and our properties. Well, now the little guy has stepped up to defend his rights. I do thank those of you who have shown us so much support these last few days. For those of you who asked the tough questions, I hope this discourse sheds some helpful light on where we're coming from and why.

Thanks and be well,

Mike Tinney
President
White Wolf, Inc

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That's from the forum on the WW website, in response to much gnashing of teeth by fans over the motives for the litigation. Personally, I think WW is entirely justified...

...this is not biased at all by the fact that I receive sporadic paychecks from them.

Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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Celtic,

Did your showing of Second Hand Lions have a preview of ROTK?

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I don't know, I missed the previews. I sat down just as the movie was starting.

I assume they played it though...I just didn't think about it until now, which makes me sad that I missed it.

Posts: 149 | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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I was particularly impressed with the history behind some of the characters' decisions and relationships. They put a lot more into this than they had to to make a second-tier fantasy film, and so I give them kudos.

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Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged |