The Charioteer:
Still can’t access Titans site. Anyone else have this problem? Is it GW stuffing you around already?
Xander:
Having been sent a similar letter from GW. Let me recount my experience:
- They addressed the letter to Ontario, California instead of Ontario, Canada.
- It arrived way after the posted date (likely for the above reason).
- The letter was poorly writen containing frequent typos.
- The most obvious typo was the typo in the domain name of the site itself (something like www.chaofs-dwarfs.com, if I recall correctly).
- I replied by way of email, explaining various things (that our t-shirts were group funded, not sold by the site)
- I was initially quite startled by the “C&D” and sought to comply with most of the demands they made.
- I never heard back from them, they never followed up
In hindsight, it’s obvious that they just have a bunch of people who put these together to scare people. The documents themselves are very crude – they aren’t real even legal documents in you ask me and they certainly are not authored by lawyers.
Without having seen your particular letter, I think my advice would be something like the following. State that you appreciate the interest in your models, but that they do not in fact infringe GW’s rights. They neither violate the copyrights or the trademarks owned by GW. Then wish them a good day, and that you encourage them to contact you should they have any further concerns.
This way you essentially ignore them, but acknowledge their letter. You put the ball back in there court and force them to get back in touch with you. It’ll be a good gauge of how serious they are. Worst case is they send a follow up letter with basically the same requests. It’s not like if you refuse the the demands in the letter that you instantly go to trial. If they are really serious, they will try to “resolve the situation” through continued correspondence. If it’s just scare tactics, you’ll likely never here from GW again.
I never did.
Borador:
I really think it sucks that you are in this situation right now Bagg.
Wether you decide to rework the range of models or wether you decide you’ll go to court, I’m supporting you!
The choice is up to you after all. I for one wouldn’t even think about legal stuff unless a legal advisor or lawyer would be almost a 100% sure I’d win the case. Just saying.
On the other hand, reworking would mainly be redoing the beards on said models, right?
Or it might even enable you to get the Heavy Infantry troopers to the same level of sculpting as e.g. the Royal Guard if you decide to rework them completely. (as I think the Royal Guard looks a lot “sharper” and your sculpting has only become even better over the years).
Like Bolg said, kickstarter could help raise funds quickly, in both situations! I’d happily support either a new or reworked range just as I would support your case.
gashnag:
Good point Xander :cheers , though I haven’t bought any models from titan-wargames I do like the models I do see very few simular traits the tusked lower teeth and beards only though. The armor isn’t even similar to the armor that your armor plates have from the scale mail end at a point and theirs are simple squares. It has been said before that armor and beard stiles used by games-workshop have been taken from historic records the only thing they did was change the combination and put decoration on the plate armor. The fact that they think they have the copyright to use historic armor and beard stiles makes me almost laugh but realy just makes me sick :sick .
p.s. I have been molding my own chaos dwarf army from sculpts I made for the past year now to combat the extreme prices of both games-workshop and forge world. $75 for complete cast and mold kit makes 50-80 dwarves if not more at this point I have 150+ chaos dwarves in my army and more in production
brotsorrow:
I talked to a friend of mine who is a corporate lawyer and she (and she stresses that she does not have all the facts) guesses that at best this is a cheap scare tactic meant to intimidate. Times are tough and market share is even tougher. Her biggest point being that if GWs comparison is between a 2d image and a 3d model from Titan, then the complaint is weak at best since GW couldn’t produce a comparison with one of their own miniatures. GW does not hold rights over mythology/ancient civilizations.
I agree with many people here in that you should fight this but i believe Xanders advice being the best so far - call them out. Point out that your range is truly nothing like their previous range and that FW came out with their mini’s after yours.
Good luck bro and keep us updated!
rpitts2004:
Having been sent a similar letter from GW. Let me recount my experience:This is good advice
- They addressed the letter to Ontario, California instead of Ontario, Canada.
- It arrived way after the posted date (likely for the above reason).
- The letter was poorly writen containing frequent typos.
- The most obvious typo was the typo in the domain name of the site itself (something like www.chaofs-dwarfs.com, if I recall correctly).
- I replied by way of email, explaining various things (that our t-shirts were group funded, not sold by the site)
- I was initially quite startled by the "C&D" and sought to comply with most of the demands they made.
- I never heard back from them, they never followed up
In hindsight, it's obvious that they just have a bunch of people who put these together to scare people. The documents themselves are very crude -- they aren't real even legal documents in you ask me and they certainly are not authored by lawyers.
Without having seen your particular letter, I think my advice would be something like the following. State that you appreciate the interest in your models, but that they do not in fact infringe GW's rights. They neither violate the copyrights or the trademarks owned by GW. Then wish them a good day, and that you encourage them to contact you should they have any further concerns.
This way you essentially ignore them, but acknowledge their letter. You put the ball back in there court and force them to get back in touch with you. It'll be a good gauge of how serious they are. Worst case is they send a follow up letter with basically the same requests. It's not like if you refuse the the demands in the letter that you instantly go to trial. If they are really serious, they will try to "resolve the situation" through continued correspondence. If it's just scare tactics, you'll likely never here from GW again.
I never did.
Xander
Thommy H:
Yeah, do what Xander says. The only time he’s ever been wrong is in comments on my blog, to my knowledge.
burock:
first of all, i am very surprised to see that none of the members of this site is a lawyer, attorney, barrister or whatever they are called in the language you speak 
Bagg, i m truly sorry to learn the situation you got into. Although all my infantries are from mantic, i’ll buy some of your stuff for the sake of support and appreciation of the work you ve done.
as Da Crusha said, getting in touch with Raging Heroes, who had their share of problems with GW recently; but since they hail from France, there is a good chance that the matters of law would be different there. Xander’s insights are also invaluable and should be considered.
ofc, it will be your decision but if it isnt a scare tactic and you decide to go to court, make sure you start a kickstarter campaign as advised above.
again, i m sorry to hear this.
The Charioteer:
[size=xx-large] I STILL CANT GET ON THE TITAN SITE IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING THIS PROBLEM OR NOT[/size]
Maybe that will get me a response for Christs sake.:mad
Da Crusha:
not having a problem
Borador:
Not having a problem accessing it either, using Safari on my iPhone.
JMR:
The documents themselves are very crude -- they aren't real even legal documents in you ask me and they certainly are not authored by lawyers.I'll echo Xander's comments. It's kinda what I was getting at in my earlier reply as well.
(...)
This way you essentially ignore them, but acknowledge their letter. (...) If it's just scare tactics, you'll likely never here from GW again.
Xander
You should question the legality of a letter like this. Find someone who can tell you more about this. Sometimes it really helps if you call them out on things like this by having a strong response showing you're not impressed by their accusations - again though, someone with more experience can better judge if this is a good idea or not (legal advice).
I'm fairly sure it would be best to make sure you do reply and not just ignore the whole case. Make sure you do everything right in these first steps - it might help your case further down the road if it comes down to it.
Get a night's rest or two on this whole thing and then figure out what you want your reply to contain. Again, seek out someone who is more experienced in these things. Don't "admit" to there being similarities between your and their models. In fact, I'd encourage you not to get into a discussion like this at all based on such a flimsy letter. You can even call them out on this.
Finally, and maybe most importantly; keep a cool head. I have to admit I was rather shocked when I first read this, but one good night's rest has already done away with that. Keep calm, think about what you want to say and don't let them get to you with their bullying.
On a less serious note: I vote for everyone to send their GW miniatures back to the evil empire with a note saying that you no longer want their overpriced product and instead direct your hobby funds towards people like Baggronor instead ;)
Golder Goldeater:
I don’t get it.
It’s not like you call them chaos dwarfs or khaos dwarfs or sth.
You just call them dwarfs. And you portray them as evil.
Heck they don’t even look like GW’s chaos dwarfs!
If that’s the way it works, then I should sue them for making a whole race (beastmen) based on my country’s mythology.
I meen come on! Minotaurs! The didn’t even have the decency to change a letter! HMPH!
And what’s with their ungors/satyrs! Oh yeah that calls for a lawsuit 
And if we have anyone from Norway, sue them for making money out of dwarfs!
IzNoGood:
Sorry to hear this and very best of luck Baggronor. There is some good advice above. Again, if you can getting an expert to look at this may be a worthwhile investment too as it will let you know where you stand realistically and dispassionately.
Baggronor:
Stay off my website guys, it just virused my pc at work. Coincidence? Thankfully the IT guys appear to have sorted it.
Just to reiterate, STAY OFF THE TITAN WARGAMES WEBSITE for now.
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Thommy H:
Bloody hell. Are you absolutely sure this isn’t some kind of elaborate attack by scammers/hackers? I’ve heard of a lot of these C&D orders, but not that they’re quite this amateurish… Your e-mail is an @titanwargames.com one, right? So could they have infected the site by hiding something in the attachment? It all seems a bit bizarre.
JMR:
The plot thickens…
The Charioteer:
OK so when I attempted to go on your site it may have been bugged but now people can go on it but you don’t recommend it. OK that’s all i wanted to know thank you all.:hat off
Vogon:
Baggronor,
Just a quick question on the letter. Did you receive it after your stuff appearing on the Beasts of War TV show? Could it be that the additional (global) publicity actually made GW notice you and that’s why you got the letter?
On a personal note I think you should stick to your guns. I’ve been saving up my paypal to make an order pretty soon
Cheers
Vogon
Willmark:
Id get clarification from GW dude. After that I’d get some legal advice.
GW doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I bet should you retain a lawyer I bet you they back down. Again last thing they want is to go to court: that costs £.