D&D: TSR Lawsuit Against WotC Voluntarily Dismissed, Vows To Refile
This past weekend, the TSR lawsuit against Wizards of the Coast was voluntarily withdrawn, but crowdfunding is still ongoing.
Last week, the company known as TSR LLC, sought to raise money to sue Wizards of the Coast. Through their crowdfunding campaign, they promised to sue Wizards of the Coast, hoping to get the courts to issue a Declaratory Judgement of Ownership and even went so far as to file a complaint against WotC in North Carolina’s Eastern District Court.
On their IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign, TSR LLC alleges “wrongful bullying of TSR”. They also include “public libeling and slander” by WotC.
In addition to the lawsuit, they would seek to have WotC’s legacy disclaimer removed from the old D&D publications.
However, there’s just one problem. Wizards of the Coast purchased D&D and all of TSR’s intellectual property rights back in 1997, including Star Frontiers, which is worth noting because earlier this summer when TSR LLC. swung onto the scene, one of their promised projects was a reboot of Star Frontiers–leading many to wonder how the company would pull that off, since as recent as 2018 Wizards of the Coast was still taking action to defend that IP.
In fact, this current complaint was filed after WotC’s attorneys contacted TSR LLC’s attorneys requesting that they “immediately terminate all infringing or unauthorized use” of WotC’s trademarks.
This fact came to light in the complaint. TSR LLC. filed the email as ‘Exhibit A’ in their own complaint against Wizards of the Coast.
In fact, the email asks the same question many players were wondering. How was TSR going to reboot Star Frontiers without the IP rights?
“It therefore came as a surprise to Wizards’ that your client applied to register the TSR Marks and was making such announcements as the one on its Facebook page approximately six days ago […] that “our next internal project “star Frontiers”, a reboot of the original is currently in preproduction…”
Especially since Wizards of the Coast is actively selling Star Frontiers on DriveThruRPG.
TSR LLC’s complaint alleged that they haven’t seen proof that Wizards of the Coast has owned certain trademarks since 1997:
However, two days after filing their complaint, TSR LLC. voluntarily dismissed their own action. They did so in a form filed on the 9th of December, but dated October 21st in text:
Despite the fact that Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR and all its IP in 1997, this doesn’t seem to be the end of the saga. On the IndieGoGo campaign, Justin LaNasa posted two updates over the weekend, announcing that TSR planned to reflie the DJOO in Washington State, and “carrying on its actions to have Wizards of the Coast remove of change [SIC] its Legacy Disclaimer.”
And then on the 12th, LaNasa continued to clarify things:
The DHSM is the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum, which is currently offering “Memberships” as part of TSR LLC.’s crowdfunding campaign. Any funds raised will go towards legal battles which will continue until TSR says they’re over.
At press time, TSR LLC. had raised 5% of their goal.
