Is Reunification still in the cards?

[Robbo]

Any format is apparently worthless because when Sergey was pondering whether to stump up the buy in price to enter the NXL (and he did so not so much because he was buying into a league but because he believed in the format which is quite ironic) he had his legal team explore the US ownership entitlements of the NXL format.
It was found no such ownership of a format could exist with the only rights being afforded to the branding i.e. XBall, for all intents and purposes you could come up with an exact duplicate of XBall and nominate it YBall and there would be no consequent infringement issues.

I was of a mind to come up with RobboBall which was the same as XBall but any person found with a designer cheat marker would receive a ban for life.

Also any player givin' it the Billy big 'un with comments to judges or opponents such as, 'I am gonna whoop yer ass Mofo' or 'get out ma face you mofo bitch coz I gonna beat yer ass down' would then have to make their way to the middle of the field and then in front of everybody, be made to cage fight with somebody from the paintball fraternity who can actually hold their hands up and who relishes this sort of opportunity (and I know a few of these guys on the American circuit).
In one fell swoop we would negate all that gangsta crap talk we see middle class white boys adopting when trying to look tough, the real world of violence would have them filling their diapers with the previous night's Pizza.

I would love control of this sport, it would be a place where there would be no cheating and the best team wins with no recourse to designer electronics, wiping, bad-mouthing, gansta talk, counter coaching or whatever.
There might be some collateral damage in the form of a few dead bodies lying around the occasional paintball tourney now and then but we can put this down to the natural expulsion of waste products from paintball's guts rather than any assassination edict from myself, either way it gets rid of the sh!t.

 

[Chicago]

Any format is apparently worthless because when Sergey was pondering whether to stump up the buy in price to enter the NXL (and he did so not so much because he was buying into a league but because he believed in the format which is quite ironic) he had his legal team explore the US ownership entitlements of the NXL format.
It was found no such ownership of a format could exist with the only rights being afforded to the branding i.e. XBall, for all intents and purposes you could come up with an exact duplicate of XBall and nominate it YBall and there would be no consequent infringement issues.

I was of a mind to come up with RobboBall which was the same as XBall but any person found with a designer cheat marker would receive a ban for life.

Also any player givin' it the Billy big 'un with comments to judges or opponents such as, 'I am gonna whoop yer ass Mofo' or 'get out ma face you mofo bitch coz I gonna beat yer ass down' would then have to make their way to the middle of the field and then in front of everybody, be made to cage fight with somebody from the paintball fraternity who can actually hold their hands up and who relishes this sort of opportunity (and I know a few of these guys on the American circuit).
In one fell swoop we would negate all that gangsta crap talk we see middle class white boys adopting when trying to look tough, the real world of violence would have them filling their diapers with the previous night's Pizza.

I would love control of this sport, it would be a place where there would be no cheating and the best team wins with no recourse to designer electronics, wiping, bad-mouthing, gansta talk, counter coaching or whatever.
There might be some collateral damage in the form of a few dead bodies lying around the occasional paintball tourney now and then but we can put this down to the natural expulsion of waste products from paintball's guts rather than any assassination edict from myself, either way it gets rid of the sh!t.

Right on!

Er, I mean...

Word!

Er, I mean...

My nigga!

Er, I mean... well... I don't know what the absolute contemporary gangsta expression of agreement is, cause I'm white. Maybe Missy can help us out.

 

[SteveD]

Chicago,

this is not the thread to be discussing the overall merits of one business plan versus another.

I've got fine, sensible rebuttals to all of your contentions. The one that comes closest to maintaining the subject of this thread is this:

ProCaps WANTED USPL. They offered to back the entire thing for 6 events in 2001. They wanted USPL because of the format AND the exclusivity of the marketing program.

Having arrived at the goal for the league by partnering with ProCaps, I foolishly believed that they were going to live up to their end of the deal. Once I had been patient enough and began to press them to do so, they announced NXL - obviously cutting me out of the equation.

I chose to go the route of giving field owners a stake, as fields are the base for creating teams. NXL chose to give manufacturers the stake. The roll out of NXL was NOT successful because they 'gave it away for free', it was successful because they engaged the companies that backed the big teams. Kind of republicans versus democrats.

Unfortunately, when you give 'big money' the influence, its very difficult for anything else to happen.

I was hoping that by moving the interest out to the fields, and by giving them a revenue-sharing program that cost them NO UP FRONT DOLLARS, they would have an incentive to use the format and thus expose the teams at the grass roots level to it.

I was not in a position to tell big name teams - you will play this format. I had to ask people to try it.

Pete - you've raised the sergei evaluation before and I respect that opinion, but my high-priced intellectual property attorneys disagree with that evaluation. Rightly or wrongly, their position is that its much like the Monopoly situation; the game itself is unique enough that its elements - when combined - make for enforceable rights. (Parker Brothers have won many suits based on 'look and feel...')

But again - this is not the thread for this discussion and I would repectfully request that you all let me end it here and have the last word - lol. (Right...)

 

[Robbo]

Pete - you've raised the sergei evaluation before and I respect that opinion, but my high-priced intellectual property attorneys disagree with that evaluation. Rightly or wrongly, their position is that its much like the Monopoly situation; the game itself is unique enough that its elements - when combined - make for enforceable rights. (Parker Brothers have won many suits based on 'look and feel...')

But again - this is not the thread for this discussion and I would repectfully request that you all let me end it here and have the last word - lol. (Right...)

I got no problem in letting you have the last word on everything but the Sergey thing because I don't want you or anybody thinking I say anything for the sake of just saying it.
Sergey is one serious individual as most people know, he owns 4 banks and is about as rich as anybody can be without assuming the role of God himself...my point being, if he tells me his lawyer guys have researched the following..then I am gonna damn well believe it, but I also respect your perspective and I suppose the only light i would add to these sometimes murky situations is that the law over there seems inextricably linked not to justice but to whoever has the most money and in that case Steve, mate, you're well and truly fukked ...

 

[Matski]

There have actually been quite similar cases in the US recently and they went (if applied to this senario) Sergie's way. Infact in the CBS vs ABC one the judge ruled that the underlying idea, the format, was an unprotectable element and CBS did not have a case in trying to prevent others from building on and using variations of it. Something along those lines anyway..

If someone came up with an 'improved version', it would be expensive ground for sure to prove that you have rights to prevent it being aired.

I'm more a contract person so won't for a second pretend I know a great deal about the area but recent cases with similarity are obviously a rule of thumb as judges must seek consistency, that's all i'm saying

 

[SteveD]

let's not bandy insoluable contentions: getting a court decision is a crapshoot and there are just as many cases to support Mataski's conclusion as there are to support the opposite.

the legal team I hired was for a major case, they are the top washington DC firm (bringing in not just the legal but political weight) and I met with them at their request, following which they agreed to take my case. these were not contingency fee lawyers. their patent guy regularly writes and reviews position papers for the USPTO, let alone private entities and is one of the most highly respected patent law theorists in the country. his partner that I worked with is one of the top guys for a brand of law that if I mentioned it would be giving too much info away (no, there's no pending suit, but I don't want to discuss what I was planning on doing).

the point being, so far as backup and legal opinion is concerned, I feel confident that I can match sergei's educated guesses with my own stable's educated guesses and nothing that anyone says on the subject amounts to a single bean in the pile - and none of it will provide any meaningful information in either case.

I was first told by 'legal' experts that I would never get a patent for a game. I got one. the rules of play are incorporated in the patent. I believe the territory covered by the claims -(a multi-scoring, multi-period version of paintball) cover x-ball in its entirety. Others don't.

BIG EFFIN DEAL

and Chicago - if I hadn't said no, the WPL/UAPL thingie would have been using the USPL format. I said no because I wanted a larger team format to come first, because I believed at the time that starting with a smaller team format would hinder the larger team format development. So there's someone else who WANTED the format.

So it goes. I've chosen a different route. I've now got an NPPL feeder circuit, several companies I'm working closely with, a bunker manufacturer, a paint manufacturer and I'm sponsoring a weekly television show that is in a position to tape just about any event I host.

Hmmmm. Wonder what we can do with that mix of elements...

 

[Chicago]

I was going to let you have the last word, but not TWO last words.

Steve, I'm not saying that the format isn't good, or that people won't want it. The format is good. People will want to use it.

Just not under the conditions you were/are demanding.

You're citing examples of people who wanted (past tense) to use the format but in the end did not - those are the very examples that support my point. Faced with your demands for using your format or creating their own format, people chose not to use your format.

And the USPL patent clearly does not cover XBall. Patents are based on claims, and none of the claims in the USPL format patent cover any aspect of XBall. (And if you disagree, I invite you to specify which claim you think XBall violates.)


I don't disagree that money goes a long way - getting anything done is much easier if you alreay have a pile of cash to spend on the effort, and XBall was certainly successful in large part because Draxxus spent a bunch of money to make it successful. And it's an unfortunate fact of life that if you want to do something, and you don't have the money yourself to do it, you may need to give up some control of what you want to do in order to have someone else give you the money you need.

And I think the USPL/Draxxus thing is a case-in-point. You wanted someone else's money to do what you wanted to do, but you wern't willing to give up any control. You have a tendency to lay out your demands, then blame everyone else when they decide they don't like your demands. It's Jerry's fault for not taking your deal to exhibit the USPL format. It's Draxxus's fault for deciding they didn't want to finance your format. That's bollucks. The problem was, you never made an offer anybody else wanted to accept. And no one is obligated to do things the way you want to do them if they don't believe it's going to be beneficial to them as well.


The best way to get what you want is to MAKE someone WANT to give it to you. You can't just expect them to agree with you just-because.

 

[SteveD]

chicago,

rebutting your assertions is taking up too much of my time.

you view my statements as laying blame; not so. you asked for historical precedent, I gave it to you. The results of the historical facts are, I suppose, open to interpretation.

I EXERCISED my control. UAPL said - we want to use the format. I said - not right now.

You're talking about two different things. You're saying - no one wants it because of control issues AND no one is using it because of control issues.

I'm saying A: people HAVE wanted it and asked for it - procaps and UAPL for two. That's fact. They wanted it. That is DIFFERENT from 'using' it.

Obviously, the above wanted it so they could use it.

Furthermore, the fact that UAPL is not using it is a clear cut case of my having the control over it. I said no, so they aren't (unlike some other people).

No one is using it right now because there's x-ball to satisfy the demand.

You've admitted you do not have a licensing contract, so you can't make any supportable assertions that its because of that contract that no one went with it.

YOU seem to be the one blabbing about control issues. I had a product that I offered under certain terms. Historically, at least UAPL was willing to accept those terms, which blows your assertion out of the water.

BUt enough of this as I have a league, television stuff and a scenario game bid to deal with right now, not to mention shipping out paint AND a distinct lack of interest in arguing this particular subject with you in particular, as it is obvious that you are going to continue to believe whatever contentions you have in your head, even in the face of demonstrable fact.

 

[MissyQ]

Right on!

Er, I mean...

Word!

Er, I mean...

My nigga!

Er, I mean... well... I don't know what the absolute contemporary gangsta expression of agreement is, cause I'm white. Maybe Missy can help us out.

In your case it would be best just to keep your mouth shut.

 

[SteveD]

I'm willing to keep my mouth shut (and have been) - but I'm not sure which mouth you were referring to, Missy...