Profit. If you have the TM for the word (litrpg) you can take down all the competing websites so yours will be the first in the google search. He says he won't be doing it to sue others but yes TM laws are murky enough for him to intimidate people not just with the threat of sueing them but to benefit from this copyrighting down the line. I knew someone like him long ago, if he is going down the same path then he'll use the TM to establish an organization around the genre that works like a critic or recommendation site for books. so if people google your book his website will be the first to pop up, right now it's either amazon or goodread with a blurb from the author. You sure you want a third party (a party as bias as Kong) to speak on your behalf?
I just checked the LitRPG FB group and that is a lot of hate going down right now. People are boycotting him. I think he may have screwed a good thing up for himself. Well, he's pretty big. He'll survive.
He’ll just kick them out and rebuild, no? And erase the evidence that they were ever upset to begin with.
He can cut out competing websites, but he cannot shut down actual news, that would be highly illegal. Hence why I suggested getting this into journalist spheres
I found this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/com...the_litrpg_trademark/?st=JAV4DN99&sh=28ad71d8 By litrpg_chik.
I also found this article: https://litrpgreviews.blog/2017/10/11/review-bombing-the-ethical-case/ which might be helpful.
Looks like that's right. Shouldn't be enforceable. At least, that's how I read it. I'm no lawyer, and that article says otherwise. "Based upon the registration, if Defendants wish to challenge ownership, they bear the burden of proving a priority of use."
Yeah... "litrpg.com" certainly looks like it's promoting other authors. I especially like how his "The List" which is supposedly there to promote new authors is actually his mailing list.
You know, it's a little difficult to find through all of the self-promotion, but there is a decent new-release section buried somewhere on that site. https://www.litrpg.com/new-releases He might buy himself some goodwill if he displayed that more prominently.
I need to get better updating our NEw Releases section here instead of relying on authors to do it. There's only less than a dozen most weeks. I'll get on that... someone hold me accountable?
Although, to be fair to myself, I do list all the new ones in the LitRPG Reads newsletter every week... https://litrpgreads.com/newsletter
Woah. A gif of Lina Inverse casting Dragon Slave? I thought people had forgotten about that series! Which reminds me, what I think we need is an easy-to-find, sleek GameLit/LitRPG database site akin to AniDB (but more streamlined). That could boost the popularity of the genre tremendously. The detailed tags on AniDB fueled my anime fix for years as I dug deeper into the tags I most enjoyed. I wouldn't have found half of the series I've watched otherwise. Currently, digging up potential reads for LitRPG books is a bit of a chore. I suspect a resource like that, so long as it's maintained by an unbiased staff, could provide a lot in the way of protection of the genre.
Yeah... I might be able to help on this... next year if someone doesn't do it first. Ramon says he built a database, but it's basically a blog like LitRPG Reads. Even the set-up here doesn't make it easy to find older LitRPG. Lemme think on this a bit. Maybe I'll have to do something in Drupal. Hrm...
That's odd. He said the trademark covers merchandise but the forum he's submitting is for digital a TM only. seems like he's trying to get ahead of that. I say keep attacking him until he relents. benefiting other authors my BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPP!!!!! I love that even his groupies are trying to sound ironic/apathetic when defending him on FB lol!
Not anymore. During the last step up - he switched everything he owned to Game Lit and washed is hands of the mess. The last thing I think living is the facebook group, which can't really be stopped by this sort of thing.
T They were never likely to. LitRPG is just the latest generation of "game novels" which were popular back when D&D ramped up in the late 80's and early 90's. Same concept, different title. It's also one of the reasons publishers aren't as likely to take note. Anyone who goes "PART OF THIS BRAND NEW GENRE" isn't really aware that the genre has existed in some form for decades.
