Less than a year from filing to grant!  Not bad—the Trademark side of the Office is getting quite speedy....

The Patent side isn’t that slow, Jeff. I was awarded US Patent 5,388,838 in only 9 months.

I never really took a side in this “conflict”. Sad really that a hobby that is supposed to bring people together had to have this ugly mess rear its head. All in all I am guessing a lot more was lost here than won. Most fights that is usually the case. After all money is earned and spent friendships are much more valuable.

Oh, it was not that costly. I paid $300 to file my Opposition and later $275 to register my Trademark. I understand that Mayfair paid for Martin’s costs.

I agree that friendships are priceless. The support of all my friends in this affair has been wonderful.

I see. Enlightening answer.

The system works!  (?)

This whole dispute brought to me to remove some characters and vendors from my “shipping list”. Forever, i guess. :)

Can I thumbs up Terry’s first post here? It is the hidden costs that are not shown here.

I’m giving Sterling’s comment a thumbs up!

Filing an Opposition - $300
Registering a Trademark - $275

__________ - Priceless

I will leave it to everyone else to fill in the blank.

In the trademark world, the answer is “customer goodwill”.

In the boardgame world, the answer is “Customer Support”, Jeff. With the customer’s start of P100s last summer, multiple quick sell outs, kind, supportive emails, and even offers of lodging at conventions, I have been blessed with a Customer base that kept me going. They have my thanks.

Yes, and that’s a particularly important component of customer goodwill (particularly in the software world, where lack of customer support often engenders customer badwill).

Quite true, but I think you misunderstand me. What I have found to be truly priceless in the last 30 months is the Customers supporting Winsome. Without their active support over this long ordeal, I probably would not have lasted the whole 30 months.

John Bohrer,

Let me be much more blunt because I don’t think you’re getting it.  With the tongue-in-cheek, self congratulatory remarks like you’ve put forth here, I’m betting there is probably a good block of people who are hoping you don’t survive the next 30 months.

So Smile!  You’re on Candid Character!  : )

Or I’m sorry, do you have a patent on that too?

Ryan B.

I get you, Ryan. You are not a Winsome customer (we only sell direct), you are upset and you have an axe to grind. Grind away. It is a free country with impartial Judges in the Patent & Trademark Office. I have nothing to prove to you, only to them.

Mr. Bohrer -

I have never played this game and have not read, but have been aware of the hoopla surrounding it.

I just have to say that the Patent Office is a truly sad bunch if ever there was one. They have no clue about this industry and I seriously doubt they have any dedicated experts in any other. I think they need a serious shake up in structure and concept.

They may be impartial, but they are also dangerously clueless.

Hi John,

I don’t know too much about this particular case, so I am not in a position to judge it.  And I’m not. I’m sure the Patent Office decides the case on its technical merits… and your side won.  You’re right: I’m not a Winsome customer… but nor do I own any Martin Wallace games either. I own “A Dog’s Life”, if you want to get an idea. (LOL)

So why my comments?

I mean seriously, why come here on a public forum and comment on this specific article to “thank your friends”?  Why not do that from your website or find another very low-key method elsewhere to do that?  Timing, John.

What is being interpreted here is that you’re finding a great big stage (BGN) and gloating about your “victory”. 

You’re just being subtle about your choice of words.

Mr. Bohrer,

I tried to be impartial with my first comment. I seem to have raised a stink here. That was not my intent. My intent was to gain more insight into you to see what you were like. I think I achieved that to some extent or as much as can be in a few sentences.

I talked about friendship and you diverted to talking about the friends that have stuck by you through this. You said nothing about the lost friendship with Mr. Wallace.

I wanted to see if there was any kind of remorse over the loss of friendship. I could find none. I cared not about who was right or wrong. I just wanted to see if your character allowed for graciousness in victory. I found none.

I thank you for your time Mr. Bohrer. While it is not my place to judge curiosity got the better of me. I now have no need to pursue who was right or wrong in this because I believe what is in the well comes up with the bucket. By that I mean what you have said tells me a lot about you.

Thank you,

Terry Bailey Sr.
Founding member
Southern Appalachian Gamers Association.

I see that you “tried to be impartial”. I prefer truth to deception. So does the PTO.

Grind away.

Wow, You really think I was untruthful? I have been accused of a lot of things but not being untruthful. Loud yes, opinionated definately, short and bald quit often. But never untruthful.
That hurts. But I am taught I should offer the other cheek. So sir I give you the other cheek.

Terry Sr.

Impartial people do not “try to be impartial”, they are impartial.

Masquerading as one is a deception.

As for your cheek, I will quote Father Flynn: “Say 3 Hail Marys, 2 Our Fathers and go in peace. Tell your mother we are having a Bake Sale on Thursday.”

Either you do not know that you are acting like a smug jerk, or you do not care.  Either option is unfortunate.

Your response saddens me. Perhaps you are misinformed.

Mayfair Games did nothing wrong when their CEO, Will Niebling, signed an Age of Steam contract with Martin Wallace in January 2007. They simply believed what Martin told them.

After Mayfair discovered the truth, Will Niebling’s 10 years at Mayfair Games ended in June 2007 and he now works at another company.

When I filed my Trademark Opposition in August 2007, multiple Warfrog people publicly wrote, on BGG and other venues, that they had evidence that Martin Wallace designed Age of Steam, owned Age of Steam, etc. Mayfair dutifully hired an excellent Chicago-based Patent & Trademark law firm to contest my Opposition and waited for this evidence from Warfrog.

The promised Warfrog evidence never materialized. In contrast, in June 2008, Ms. Kuczma, Martin’s zealous, very experienced Trademark Attorney, had 67 evidentiary exhibits from Winsome supporting my Opposition. Their case evaporated. Judgement was entered against Martin Wallace by the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board in July 2008.

The only thing Mayfair Games did wrong was believing Martin Wallace without checking the facts. They did not oppose my subsequent 2008 Trademark Application for Age of Steam (now a Registered Trademark, Reg. No. 3,622,075), so they have learned from their experience with Martin Wallace.

Mayfair Games is a great company and its President, Larry Roznai is a good, honest man. When Larry told me in a conversation that they wanted to call the new game Steam, I told him that was OK by me. Mayfair was just a trusting victim and I wish them well.

One final Note: In February 2009, Martin Wallace publicly admitted that he did not really design Prairie Railroads, etc. I welcome that admission and wish Martin well with his remake of Dieter Danziger’s excellent, very original Lokomotive Werks game. Dieter does not care about money or recognition, but he deserves both.

I welcome that admission and wish Martin well with his remake of Dieter Danziger’s excellent, very original Lokomotive Werks game. Dieter does not care about money or recognition, but he deserves both.

I love the smell of libel in the morning.

Or perhaps I should more open-mindedly ask: can you prove that statement to be true? If not it would surely improve the rhetoric of the site to kindly ask the moderator that it be removed.)

Automobile is fairly clearly similar to Lokomotive Werks.  Whether it is sufficiently similar to be a close derivative or is a new work that was merely inspired by Lokomotive Werks is both an unanswerable question, and a question that probably shouldn’t be asked.  I see no value in kicking that can.

I don’t see that Lokomotive Werks and Automobile are related at all, save for basic concepts of business, and the idea of obsolescence in a game production engine.

That statement is equivalent to declaring that Tracks to Telluride is a remake of Silverton.