Tim Langdell - On The Edge of Law and Ethics

Opinion from Matt - Monday, 13 July 2009 @ 11:01pm

Every now and then people pop up who raise the collective hackles of the games industry. Most often they're politicians, like Michael Atkinson, or lawyers like Jack Thompson. But sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're just bastards. Worst of all, sometimes they're actually IN the games industry.

Enter stage left Tim Langdell.

Langdell's most recent activities have brought his murky past to light. He's a one-time developer who now makes a living "enforcing his trademark". His trademark is the word "Edge", as a result of his early 90s games company "EDGE games".

If you've ever wondered why Soul Edge was called Soul Blade over here... now you know.

Langdell sues or threatens anyone whose game or product includes the word "Edge", and because of the insane nature of our legal system it's cheaper to pay him to go away than to fight him on it. As a result he has a "credit" of some kind on everything from Mirror's Edge to EDGE (an iphone game released this month) to the movie The Edge with Sean Connery. Most recently he's started harrassing Edge of Twilight, the Brisbane built game from FuzzyEyes, which is expected to release this year and is looking damn hot.

Langdell has registered a trademark for "Edge of Twilight". It seems almost inconcievable that he can do that. It continues Langdell's traditional raping of trademark law. When EDGE for the iPhone was threatened with millions of dollars in litigation, the developers offerred to change their name to EDGY instead. Langdell refused, and then immediately got a trademark on EDGY as well.

Langdell is actually a developer himself, or used to be. He claims credit for more than 100 games, but as none of them were released after 1994 he's an irrelevancy now. Worse, a parasite.

If you need evidence of the man's duplicitious nature, look no further than Wikipedia. His entry has been removed now, but it was a glowing testament to a pioneer of the industry, with no mention of his underhandedness and predatory use of trademark. Discussion on the wiki entry mentioned that the content was all created by a single user "CheriDavis", who claimed to have done a lot of research on "founders of the games industry" and was totally not Langdell's wife, Cheri Davis Langdell.

One of the weirdest and saddest aspects of this case is that Langdell is actually a board member of the International Game Developers Association.

What should happen here? The legal ramifications are important. Trademarks should not be able to be taken out on normal English words, and should be only applicable when a product is similar. Starting a computer company called Apple Computers is a trademark violation, but starting a company called Apple's Eye Bakeries is totally fine. Langdell's entire trademark needs to be called into question. Basically he needs to sue someone like EA and get called on it, breaking his trademark and teaching him that one can't be a complete knob for 15 years without consequence.

As for the IDGA, they've specifically said that they've got no part in it. What he does as a private citizen is his business, and protection of his trademark is his right.

Bullshit. He's a trademark bully, and he should not be getting their protection, but instead be ejected from IDGA. He's not making games. He's making money by making trouble.

Have a look at the IDGA Code of Ethics:

It's worth noting an excellent article by Simon Carless on GameSetWatch was pulled for unknown reasons. It's possible legal pressure was put on the website by Langdell, though by no means certain. GameSetWatch could just be gutless sooks who lack the balls to do more than repost EA press releases. In truth, though, I quite like GSW and will give them the benefit of the doubt. There could be a dozen reasons for an article to be removed and there's no reason to look to the worst case first.

I wanted to state, however that anyone who wants me to remove this article will need to contact Australian Gamer's content editor directly. As that person is me I'm more likely to laugh at you and post your request as an update to the article.

Legal Note: In running Australian Gamer over the last four years I've investigated defamation law quite closely. I have confirmed a few things. One is that you can't get sued for something that's true, or that you believe to be true. Another is that you cannot be sued for something that is an opinion. I have made this article an "opinion" rather than news for exactly that reason. The article is factual as best I can find the information.

http://www.tigsource.com/articles/2009/06/09/tim-langdell-and-edge-part-two

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/05/trademark-troll-gets-mobigames-edge-taken-down/

http://imr.ip-design.com/imr/iview/c33i_m.htm

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/07/trademark-troll-is-at-it-again/

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6456.msg209504#msg209504