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Young Gods: The Legal Battle Continues

Published Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:00:34 -0500

Back in March, I reported that Ian Sharman of Orang Utan Comics was told to change the name of his graphic novel Young Gods by the legal representatives of Barry Windsor Smith.

Windsor Smith had previously published a Young Gods series within the Storyteller anthology for Dark Horse, more recently collected and remastered for Fantagraphics as Young Gods And Friends.

Sharman backed down then, renaming his comic Alpha Gods, depsite at the time, pointing out that Young Gods creations by Marvel, DC and the like may make it a difficulty trademark to defend. Maybe that's why Windsor Smith's studio manager Alex Bialy is ensuring it never gets that far with strongly worded letters.

The latest is the online Role Playing magazine RPG Review. In issue 4, they ran a RPG scenario for a game called Young Gods, before receiving the following letter;

RPG Review ran the piece in issue 5, alongside a little back-and-forth. And while there is plenty of explanation on RPG Review's as to why this is ludicrous, there's a really easy one that's missing. It's not a trademark violation, because RPG is not trading under the name Young Heroes, or using it to promote a trade. It's the name of an article in a magazine. Okay, it's mentioned on the cover, but come on, this is a one off. it would get laughed out of court, whatever country the trial happened in.

Unless it was in the land of Mordor and the presiding judge was a Goblin King, obviously.

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