I believe he meant that Hasbro could essentially pull their business away from BBTS, as in no longer letting them offer Hasbro items on their site due to their involvement in selling 3rd party items. It's hard to say if things would reach that point but the question I'd be curious about is what BBTS or any other site for that matter would do when given the choice.

 

Good for you Hasbro and Fun Pub!

Get rid of the KO trash!

 

IP, especially Copyright, is a very vague, grey area of law and legal enforcement. That's why court cases around it are so expensive and long and unsure of outcome.

Trademark is much clearer, but far more limited.

What a company chooses to do at their own convention is also quite clear, provided it doesn't violate other laws.

Hurling vitriol at Hasbro is pointless.

Yelling at fellow fans, even more so.

 

No reason for me to go since I already have all the official product I currently want. The whole point of a con, for me, is to see and acquire items I can't get elsewhere. It's especially disappointing if this applies to original art that happens to feature a Hasbro character. There are some talented artists out there the make some great TF art I would purchase. Too bad, I was looking forward to this after a great TFcon last year.

 

*facepalm*

i said character... for example




obviously, items and appliance play by a differ rules.. otherwise, Apple would able to sue every phone maker in the world for infringement of their copywriters.

but if you want to play that way, then i would say yes, those car are knock off..

 

I see the same argument popping up through out this thread

3rd party figures don't affect Hasbro. However I've seen countless times people saying they're going to stick with their X 3rd party figure instead of buying CW or other Hasbro/Takara offering. That is affecting Hasbro's bottom line.

The argument that 3rd party fills a void that Hasbro left. The reality is Hasbro didn't make the figures fast enough for some people. Through their impatience of wanting what they want when they want it, is really the issue. Hasbro is bringing out combiners and they look great. The characters that 3rd party are making are the same ones Hasbro is going to eventually get to, maybe not on the time frame some people are hoping, but they can't release every character at once.

The question of what qualifies as infringement and what can or can't be at Botcon is either people not really thinking or being intentionally dim. If it represents a character Hasbro or Takara has done then it shouldn't be at Botcon.

I for one am glad 3rd party figures aren't going to be allowed at Botcon, though I won't be attending this year. I got so sick year after year of seeing the same 3rd party figures. This is Hasbro's show, it's the official Transformer convention.

People complaining that the dealer room will only have stuff you can find at Target/TRU/Walmart apparently lives in a magical world where you can buy vintage G1, Japanese figures, BW, BM, Animated figures at big box stores. You can get online and buy any number of these 3rd party figures.

 

Something like this is always possible. I think it was Hegemon that BBTS didn't carry (although other, smaller, retailers did) and people assumed it was because BBTS thought it might trip Hasbro's hypothetical line for "Enough is enough" - that's pretty unconfirmed, though.

As a practical matter, because BBTS does a lot of non-TF and non-3P business, they're more vulnerable to pressure* from Hasbro (they could lose their supply of TFs, Star Wars, etc., and part of their appeal to some is being able to satisfy multiple hobbies in one location) than, say, Captured Prey.

I would imagine Hasbro has determined how much work it'd take to shut down 3rd parties and figured it's more than the relatively paltry sum they're losing (especially when one considers how hard it would be to stop us from importing as well).

*By pressure, I mean "Stop selling product x or we'll stop selling to you" which doesn't require an IP judgement by a court

 

It's the same thing, it looks similar but isn't the same. And with fictional characters who transform we are talking a even bigger gray area. So are all of my Hasbro CHUG figures knockoffs of official vehicles since they made enough changes to avoid licencing?

 

see:

No reason to fear about art, just dealer room toys

 

This whole debate reminds me of a story I read called "The puppy who lost his Way"...

 

You do realize that example works against your case, right? Delicate warrior filled a 30 year commercial gap that HASBRO did not care about. It needed the actual fucking kitbasher fan to become an employee and put some sense in that company and release the official toy, and now the company is profiting from it. Anyone dissing Delicate Warrior for being an outlawed KO is a huge hypocrite in my book.

 

You do know that none of Apple's highly successful appliances (in the past 15 years) were originally Apple's ideas? There were portable MP3 players long before iPods, tablets nearly identical to iPad's design were available back in the early 2000s, and touchscreen phones predated iPhone by half a decade.

To reiterate, Hasbro's convention, Hasbro's rules. They are perfectly within their rights to ask for the ban. Fortunately, no one is forced to go to BotCon (and honestly, I have no idea why anyone would go... it gets worse and worse every year from the reports).

 

Unfortunately Hasbros Arcee never made it to stores in my area because I would have bought her on sight.

 

All the more reason to just go to TFCon.

 

Why the facepalm? He is perfectly right, Hasbro does the EXACT SAME THING. They use a real-world car, plane, or whatever for its likeness and recognizability, change a few minor details so that they don't have to pay the license, and then make profit - in part because the people recognize the said car/plane design and think it's cool that it transforms into a robot.

 

I feel that is the main reason why MPs take ao long to come out. They have been going after licenses so that they can properly do the figure.

 

idea wise, yes, design wise.. well every phone ever since iphone introduce is a carbon copy of each other, if copywrites for appliances work like creative media copywrites, apple can pretty much go around suing everyone that make anything that look like an iphone.

except representation of an item isnt the same as the item. you can argue starscream is an knock-off of F11 jet, except he isnt really a knock-off because he just represent the generic fighter jet. this is why mythbuster drink cola, not coca-cola.

what 3rd party does isnt the same, you cant claim that this is just a generic female transforming robot when it contain characterization of specific character.

 

Yeah, MP cars (and Alternity, and Alternators... ironically ALL are originally Takara's lines) are officially licensed, which is clearly stated on the packaging. Cybertron Crosswise, which looks almost identical to a Bugatti Veyron, was not.

 

This made me laugh so hard that my face hurts.  

 

I do not understand why this is has become such a big deal. Isn't most anything 3P-related available online? Are people really basing their attendance at Botcon solely on whether or not 3P products will be available?