Cue the music:
Here we go again:
[Cue music: Daft Punk's "One More Time"]
This time I will try to make it easier to understand the history for newbies on the subject:
chrisr said:
This is exactly the kind of misconceptions that do the damage, and the very reason I will take the time to respond.
The king of misinformation (btw, for the new people, just enter "NGF" into the search engine and check some of the threads that pop up. Also, please refer to the "NGF Bible" who's URL has been posted elsewhere). I'll try to give you a glimpse throughout my post.
chrisr said:
You think we are prohibited from selling neo geo games? This is certainly not the case. I can today, tomorrow, or next year sell ANY eno geo game ever made (including protos). What the permanent injunction says is Dion or I cannot sell any INFRINGING ITEMS. It is stating the obvious, as you cannot sell infringing items either.
Of course, to be slapped with a Permanent Injunction telling you the
obvious is just as telling. One thing for those new to this: Filing a frivilous motion (like an injunction) is ground for sanctions... but SNK-P was allowed to slap an injunction for something "obvious" on Mr. Ray and Mr. Dakis. Now think to yourself: Did they do anything to warrant that? In the eyes of the Court: Yes. It's amazing what blemishs can be made without wasting the money on going to trial.
Still, I've compiled a brief backgrounder for newer readers to this saga:
HISTORY LESSON:
(A) As everyone in the Neo Community who remembers the heyday of NGF can tell you, they made their name on two things:
----(1) selling "ultra rare" games, these were games that were
never released on home cart. Of course, to create these games they had to create conversions of the MVS cartridge and then make a new home cart case (complete with infringing insert). Did NGF ever have permission to make these? No. A certain "Shock Troopers 1" home cartridge, made by NGF, is what landed them in this lawsuit to begin with.
----(2) they would "correct" inserts (seriously, that's what they'd call it). By "Correcting" inserts they would take your old insert, destroy it (there are pictures of these two shredding them), and replace with a new "corrected" insert created by the NGFers. of course, this was all an infringement because they never had permission to create new inserts for any SNK-P game they wanted.
(B) NGF made a very large portion of their business on those two aspects. They took advantage of their homebrew inserts and rare games in order to ask for unreal prices (yes, even for this hobby). Were they worth the money? Well, ask someone on this board to pay the amount you paid them and see what happens.
(C) They would claim that everything they did was permitted by SNK, but as the lawsuit proves, that definitely wasn't the case: NGF got permission to do a narrow group of things, but then tried to milk it for their own gain, only to get the ire of SNK-P,
THUS:
This Permanent Injunction amounts to a very tight leash that SNK-P may now pull whenever it sees something it doesn't like.
chrisr said:
But the reason this is down on paper for us is we agreed to no longer reproduce/repackage/release the games we had previously purchased the rights to do from SNK Japan. Which means if we manufactured additional neo geo products and sold them they would NOW (NOT WERE!!!!!) be infringing items, and therefore we would be held liable. Think about this, if you were a company that just spent a LARGE amount of money to recover an asset, wouldnt you want more than a promise that you were getting what you paid for?
Yawn... All Mr. Ray is saying here is that they can sell anything that they didn't infringe. Well "lad-dee-dah", that's an obvious statement.
Since their business used to deal with a lot of infringing "corrected" inserts, this means that they now have to just sell things at lower prices than the crazy amounts they wanted for their infringed versions of games.
chrisr said:
So, in summary, yes we can sell any games we currently own. We can purchase more games and resell them. We can do whatever we want as long as we reproduce ADDITIONAL product. ALL CURRENT PRODUCT is 100% authorized and recognized as legit. It is 100% legal for a consumer that owns an NGF title to resell the game. Playmore has NO rights to these games, and they are protected as games produced when we owned the rights. Please ask Playmore.
NGF is on such a tight noose that you damn well better believe that they can't sell bad games. What's there is okay otherwise SNK-P's taking a nice swift tug on their shiny new choke chain.
chrisr said:
Also, the updated list will go up soon. I have asked them to take the old list down as it has caused more harm than good.
You and what Injunction against them? It doesn't sound like you're on their good graces. Besides, since they posted it half of the Neo Community downloaded it, so it'll live for posterity.
chrisr said:
Also, the $5000 bond was put up by Playmore to introduce the lawsuit. After the settlement they asked for it back. It was not NGF money.
These are the facts, believe them or not, but you did get your answers. Hopefully, others that wondered did as well.
Thanks,
ChrisR
I'm not disputing this last part. Other than your own costs, whatever they may be, I don't doubt SNK-P had to pay the filing fees.
"Ole!"