It appears that a few posts have been deleted from the Stardock Studios forum thread we keep mentioning.
Right now the pro-Stardock crowd is examining the F&P counter-claim, and seem pissed by F&P quoting Brad Wardell's public statements.....those devious bastards.

Funny how all your posts talk in favor of just the one side while conveniently ignoring anything supporting the other.

I notice how no one here mentioned that the judge put both parties under a gag order with regards to discussing anything about settlement negotiations, for example. This is probably why you haven't heard anything new from Fred and Paul on their blog lately. I wouldn't be surprised if they were chastised by the judge for their antics.

This case won't be decided by Reddit/Stardock or GoG forum posters. It will be decided based on the actual facts of the case.

Both sides are waiting for a ruling by whatever judge or court system the legal claims were filed in, that I agree with.

Whichever party the court system decides for, the other side is likely to appeal, and so on, until one party runs out of money. Both sides appear to be decently funded, so the US supreme court or THE PEOPLE'S COURT tv show might be the final decider.

I think I summed up my views to you about who is right on post 202 of this thread(page 5, 2nd post).
Both sides have posted online about the case-counter claims, Brad Wardell aka Frogboy has been extremely vocal, while F&P opted for posting documentation & legal filings online.

Post 202? F&P are right because Wardell seems angry? I mean "WOW!", what an insightful opinion you have...so much depth to it. You must think you are so very smart...

Of course F&P clearly didn't display any anger at all...even with their stupendous claims that Galactic Civilization ripped off Star Control II.

Like I said, too many people in this thread choosing to cherry-pick everything in favor of F&P. And none of you want to listen to anything that disagrees with your own very narrow-minded view of the world.

I'll call it now, F&P are going to have a serious problem when they were not involved with the Atari bankruptcy. They should have been defending their IP rights at that point. That bankruptcy court made rulings regarding what Atari owned and it's very likely that by not contesting it at the time, they may have lost some rights that might rightfully have been theirs.

When I searched for similar cases awhile back, I ran across one where a songwriter had royalty rights with a recording label. But when that recording label went bankrupt and the assets were sold off, the new company that bought it owned that music outright because the artist didn't take part and defend his royalty rights before the court. It was described as a lesson of why all parties need to pay attention to who shares rights to a property and why they must be ready to be involved if one of the parties goes bankrupt.

It's somewhat similar to what Nightdive tried to do to get No One Lives Forever re-released. They filed a trademark claim. Had none of the rightsholder's defended their rights, they might have gained ownership through the court. Alas, someone piped up and that didn't happen.

Let's just see what happens with the Star Control lawsuit & counter-claims.
Stardock wins, that's cool. F&P wins, that's cool too. Gun to my head gut choice: Kavik_Kang wins somehow.

Music copyright stuff is more defined, with a longer history and much deeper field of cases to go through.
Computer game copyrights date back to Ralph Bauer and however you date his work.
SpaceWars of course predates Ralph Bauer's work, but was never copyrighted or sold commerically.

The part you don't seem to get is that it is rarely one side wins all. It's more a matter of degree of success.

Music, movies or books are all intellectual property. Most laws and precedents will apply across the board. Computer games are not that different to have their own set of laws unless it concerns something specific to that medium...

I came in here to check up on the situation. Looks like everything will be effed up for years and years to come :-(

Yes, probably. A settlement may happen once the court case actually happens, and everyone sees what submitted to the court evidence is allowed or not allowed in the court case.

I am non-committal on who I'd like to see win the Star Control IP rights court case, and possible Star Control IP rights settlement because I have reservations about both sides,.

F&P: they are coming back to an IP they originally stopped working on about 20 years ago. The track record of game developers going back and reworking on their older IP's has been dire. Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux, Chris Roberts, inxile and Wasteland 2, blizzard and starcraft 2, etc.

Stardock: Basically I distrust Stardock's new modus operandi (which I will explain further down), and as RWarehall said, the best option for both parties is to stay quiet until the lawsuit is over/final settlement has occurred.......only Brad Wardell just can't stop commenting and clarifying his statements about the lawsuit on his own companies forums. These posts by Brad Wardell can in turn be mined by F&P as new evidence, further dragging out the court case. Not sure why Stardock hasn't locked that thread, and replied with a generic "Sorry cannot comment" to any future posts about the Star Control IP rights.

Stardock adopted Paradox Studios modus operandi of releasing a base game + infinite amounts of DLC for that base game, only Stardock never quite seems to finish making their base game before publishing it. Galciv3, Offworld traders, ashes of the singularity are my evidence.

Update :

https://www.dogarandkazon.com/blog/2018/6/21/frungy-defense-fund-the-fund-of-kings

And ironically asking for $2 million in legal fees in a fight over an IP and other assets that allegedly was bought in the Atari bankruptcy for $300,000-$400,000.

I hope that the campaign is more a publicity stunt, than anything else, because this doens't feel right at all. How is this even legal?

Why are they asking for money from fans for a legal defense fund if they are just going to accept a payoff (a.k.a. settlement) to give up the IP & go away anyway? IMO that sounds like a way to scam gamers out of money.

Lol that you could make a list without even mentioning Elemental and it's many remakes. Yes it's gotten quite bad from the company that used to promote their 'Gamer's bill of rights'

FWIW, the $300k number floating around is what Brad claims to have spent in total on acquiring the IP. That would include lawyer rental fees, travel expenses, bar tab, and all that jazz. There was almost no competition for the IP leading up to the auction and at least when I looked into it (because yeah, I was going to buy it before I heard Stardock was going to bid) it was estimated that it would go for near starting bid. Brad probably actually paid 150-200k for the IP and the rest is padding. But, I didn't go to the auction and could be wrong.