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German law smites Warhammer 40,000 fan film
- Posted in: Copyright
on 20th November 2007 Link to this page
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'Damnatus', an ambitious film lovingly crafted by German fans and based on the world of a tabletop war game 'Warhammer 40,000' has been banned from release because German copyright law "confers rights on the creators of works (and) that cannot be given away."
Essentially this places the owners of the Warhammer 40,000 brand Games Workshop (GW) in a situation where they have to decline and ban the film from being released.
Andy Jones, Head of Group Legal and Licensing has stated, "the creators of Damnatus cannot assign their rights to Games Workshop even if they wanted to". And if GW were to allow the film's release, it would be giving up the title to the Warhammer 40,000 intellectual property.
Jones issued a written explanation of the ban on Damnatus, which included the clarification, "To lose control of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 is simply unthinkable. So we must be vigilant, and perhaps sometimes seemingly heartless in our decisions to safeguard the IP for the future success of the business and the hobby."
Jones added Games Workshop's admiration for the project, and stressed the company was not acting "malevolently". He said, "This is perhaps to be regretted, nonetheless in the final analysis we simply have no choice but to say 'no'."
Huan Vu, Director and Producer of the film admitted that the Damnatus team was shocked at the ban, but still thought an "amicable solution" could be reached.
In an interview with the BBC he said "It's really horrible for artists not being able to show off their own work."
Dr Guido Westkamp, a lecturer on intellectual property law at the University of London, called the Damnatus versus Games Workshop scrap "unprecedented" and told the BBC that "copyright cases were always tricky to resolve… it's very much a question of looking in total at the work in question and then perhaps to look at the technical features in that work."
Dr Westkamp concluded, "It's not come before German courts before at all. But it's one that really affects new technology."
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