UK-based Warhammer painting firm Siege Studios has burnt a lot of community goodwill in the last 24 hours. On Tuesday, it emerged that Siege Studios’ founder James Otero had sent a round of cease and desist letters to UK ‘warboots‘ – swap meets for Warhammer collectors to sell unwanted minis or pick up bargains – claiming it held a trademark over the term, and that other groups had to rename their events immediately. Community backlash was swift, and before the end of the day Otero had issued a full apology and announced he was withdrawing any claims over the word ‘warboot’.
Wargamer has seen the C&D notice sent to Rob McFerran – organiser of the ‘Wirral Warboot’ swap meet – on October 6, via email and Facebook messenger. The messages states that “WARBOOT is now a registered trademark in the United Kingdom, and as such, no other events, pages, groups, or organisations in the UK may use the name WARBOOT or any derivative of it”.
There’s an important error in this statement. The brand logo for Warboot is indeed a registered trademark in the UK, entering the register on August 29, but that isn’t the same as the word warboot. An application to add the word ‘warboot’ to the register was filed at the UK Intellectual Property Office on the same day that the C&D letters were sent, but it wasn’t yet in effect. We’ve asked Otero to comment on this error.
The C&D notice then states that “the continued use of this name without authorisation could constitute an infringement of the registered mark, which may result in legal action”, continuing “we therefore kindly request the immediate change of any event names, social media pages, or materials currently using the name WARBOOT, or any variation of it, that you may own, manage, or be responsible for”.
McFerran says he initially posted about the C&D notice in the Wargames Calendar group, but the post had to be taken down after personal information appeared in the comments. On Tuesday, he posted to the ‘Wirrel Warboot & Wirral WarCon tabletop gaming convention’ Facebook page expressing his dismay at the C&D notice, and that he had no intention of complying with it.
Among the respondents to the post was Darren Fleming of the Fife Warboot, who stated “our warboot also got the same meuse ssage, we even had Siege at our event this year as a guest so [this] feels like a right slap in the face”. John Woolley of Deeside Defenders responded with some historical context on the ‘warboot’ name: “Paul [Reid] formerly of MAWS club sadly now passed from cancer was the first to the term Warboot and hold public trading and sale events”.
Element Games, a large UK retailer and event space coordinator that also organises warboots made its own response, posting a Facebook message stuffed with the Word ‘warboot’, effectively sticking a middle finger up to the C&D notice. Community sentiment on social media was against Otero, spreading into the larger Reddits and various facebook communities.
James Otero published an apology video and statement to the Siege Studios Facebook page on Tuesday evening. “I firstly want to sincerely apologise for any annoyance or upset caused to you or your community… My intention was only ever to create a national brand of Warboot events in response to the demand I often receive for similar events elsewhere”.
“I am so used to trademarking names and brands in my other companies and from my past work history that I took no real thought about this or the ramifications of doing so for something so community-based”, he states. He adds “I also stupidly did not consider how asking others not to use the name would be received which I sincerely apologise for”.
Otero has withdrawn the application to trademark the word ‘warboot’ from the trademark office. Deeside Defenders and Wirral Warboot both responded to Otero’s statement saying that they are happy with it. Community sentiment – as shown in responses to Otero’s apology – remains extremely divided.
The following video promo was released in 2009 by the Manchester Area Wargames Society to advertise ‘warboot three’, demonstrating that the term has been in use for at least 15 years. It’s also a whiplash inducing look back at social media 15 years ago. How far we’ve come.
Intellectual property law is a hot-button issue in the Warhammer community. Games Workshop aggressively protects its copyrights and trademarks with cease and desist letters and, on occasion, further legal action. While its usually obvious that the company is acting within its legal rights – notwithstanding the farcical incident when it got Amazon to stop sales of a sci-fi book called “Spots the Space Marine” – it has still taken actions that are badly received by the community, such as its blanket ban on fan animation. Warhammer fans associate C&D letters with corporate muscle flexing.
For a convivial wargaming community, come and hang out in the Wargamer Discord. We don’t have a bring and buy channel yet, so no swap meets, but we also won’t hit you with a C&D notice if you describe yourself as a ‘wargamer’.