Scott Fulop VS Archie, New Lawsuit for a New Year

[Jason Berry]

1 hour ago, Johnny Boy said:

Oh dear. Just when we all thought we were out of the woods with this mess after Penders. Archie really can't seem to catch a break.

Archie is the one fucking things up. If they hadn't re-released the books digitally, this wouldn't have come to pass. 

[Your Vest Friend]

Personally not got too much sympathy for Archie. Look, as much as people here don't like Penders and likely would treat everyone else with the same ire if they took that same legal route, Archie legitimately did some very shady (and outright nasty) things to dick over their staff. Heck, they still do; that's why Jon Gray left.

[Jason Berry]

8 minutes ago, Sonic The Badass said:

Well, thats still unfortunate. And I'm disgusted by Penders and Fulop abusing Archie's misfortune.

For what? Wanting royalties for characters they created and worked they did rather than getting NOTHING on reprints? 

[Sonic The Badass]

24 minutes ago, Jason the Jackass said:

For what? Wanting royalties for characters they created and worked they did rather than getting NOTHING on reprints? 

Nah, Thats Archie's fault for reprinting comics when they just got finished rebooting the series so it doesn't use characters they can get into shit for. It was stupid of them to rerelease issues which had characters that did not explictly belong to Ian Flynn or Sega without thinking something might happen. 

[Salamander]

I assumed that Archie knew what they were doing when they pursued reprints of comics with the booted characters.  If they didn't, then quite frankly, they have nobody but themselves to blame.

32 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Personally not got too much sympathy for Archie. Look, as much as people here don't like Penders and likely would treat everyone else with the same ire if they took that same legal route, Archie legitimately did some very shady (and outright nasty) things to dick over their staff. Heck, they still do; that's why Jon Gray left.

I'm keeping an open mind on this one.  Honestly, it's a lot easier to do when the characters in question aren't a legion of Knuckles knock-offs.

[Sonic The Badass]

And I may be misreading something. But the way I see the situation is that both writers abused a situation where Archie no longer has the contracts that state the characters these writers create are property of Sega. Which is why I said I'm disgusted by their actions. However Archie re-releasing content that could get them in trouble is a move of incompetence I can not defend.

[SSF1991]

1 hour ago, Tylinos said:

We've hardly even scratched the surface with the facts on this case, and it certainly doesn't help that our only source for details of the suit thus far is a brief summary peppered with doom and gloom reporting, along with misinformation.  If you're going to make a report saying that Fulop is primarily suing over digital reprints from 2013 onward, one thing your article shouldn't say is that "Fulop is apparently citing infringement on Sonic comics spanning from 1996-2012, and claiming republished and original work going up to 2009."  That makes it sound like his lawyer is incompetent enough to be suing over things outside the statute of limitations.

What "gloom and doom" reporting and "misinformation"? We didn't know anything about him primarily suing over digital reports until after the article was written, dude. The story was developing as I was writing that. When you're writing as story as it breaks, the articles are not going to be perfect.

I reported on what we knew at the time, and nothing more.

[Tylinos]

Personally, I'm completely cool with the idea of Scott or other writers suing for reprint royalties and the like.  They deserve that.

That said, it's off-putting to me when there's lawsuits for copyright infringement over it.  That's a completely different kettle of fish that goes beyond just seeking what they're rightly due.

But before jumping to any conclusions on whether or not that's what Scott's doing, I want to wait for more information.  The reporting so far's been...spotty, to put it one way.  For all I know, the lawsuit could be simply seeking reprint royalties as the infringement damages.  The articles so far have been way too unclear on the facts to be sure.

[Sonic The Badass]

1 minute ago, Tylinos said:

Personally, I'm completely cool with the idea of Scott or other writers suing for reprint royalties and the like.  They deserve that.

That said, it's off-putting to me when there's lawsuits for copyright infringement over it.  That's a completely different kettle of fish that goes beyond just seeking what they're rightly due.

But before jumping to any conclusions on whether or not that's what Scott's doing, I want to wait for more information.  The reporting so far's been...spotty, to put it one way.  For all I know, the lawsuit could be simply seeking reprint royalties as the infringement damages.  The articles so far have been way too unclear on the facts to be sure.

I agree with this. I was under the assumption this was copyright infringement over characters. If its over Archie not paying reprint royalties they deserve to get sued. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Look, all I want to know is how will this affect things in the long run.

Despite all my desires to preserve anything we can from the old setting, I'm pretty much settled the reboot as it is. If this doesn't affect that, I quite frankly don't think there's anything much to worry about for any of us here. Doesn't seem like it'll be much, but we've been surprised by the last lawsuit, so who's telling?

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Wasn't Fulop the one who brought Penders on board and let him do whatever he wanted unchecked?

I always wondered if Archie could have a case against him for apparently not doing what would be assumed to be his duty and getting everyone working on the book to sign contracts (though I guess they still have their story that they did to uphold?).

[Tylinos]

34 minutes ago, SSF1991 said:

What "gloom and doom" reporting and "misinformation"? We didn't know anything about him primarily suing over digital reports until after the article was written, dude. The story was developing as I was writing that. When you're writing as story as it breaks, the articles are not going to be perfect.

I reported on what we knew at the time, and nothing more.

Sorry, only saw your post after I already posted and refreshed.

The 1996-2012 stuff from the article really rubbed me the wrong way, because it's inaccurate information being pushed out as if it's the heart of the case, without any warning about it even potentially being inaccurate.  If that really was the heart of it, it would change the entire context of the lawsuit, and would make it all completely pointless.  Even worse, despite being before you even knew that it was mainly over the digital reprints, the article still presented the case as being really bad for Archie, even though if the facts really were like you initially reported, it wouldn't be.

The "brief summary" I was referring to was your summary post earlier in the thread, where you linked to the article.  That also had the 1996-2012 info, and talked about the $140,000,000+ stuff, which was just... Really?  Yeah, you can say that it's technically true that that's the maximum penalty, but there's no reason to list it like that except for people to be concerned about it.  It also doesn't help when the article itself ends with "We’ll be updating you more on the latest, but this…looks bad. Especially for Archie and the Sonic comics."  Color commentary like that passed off as reporting is part of why I was wary of TSSZ articles in the past.

(There were also the tweets from TSSZ, I assume from Tristan based on the signature, which talked about how the comics are definitely doomed, but that's Twitter, so I can give those a pass.)

[Your Vest Friend]

16 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Look, all I want to know is how will this affect things in the long run.

Despite all my desires to preserve anything we can from the old setting, I'm pretty much settled the reboot as it is. If this doesn't affect that, I quite frankly don't think there's anything much to worry about for any of us here. Doesn't seem like it'll be much, but we've been surprised by the last lawsuit, so who's telling?

Worst-case scenario is that we end up without a comic period.

More likely is a complete stop on any pre-reboot reprints in any format (ie not digitally either), so the only way to get them legitimately would be to hunt them down on eBay or Amazon.

[goku262002]

Random thoughts.

~First off, does Fulop have a twitter? wonder if hes just gonna be as 'chatty' as Penders is if he does.

~Second, I wonder if Penders did have something to do with this, seeing as his name is plastered all over the documents. more likely then not he was the one who put Scott up to this idea and assuring him he can beat them and get easy money.

~Third, what has Scott Fulop been doing lately? is he been like an unemployed mooch like Penders or has been been in the comic game still for other companies or just a different life profession all together? it'll make me better understand the why hes doing this.

~Fourth, realistically and looking at the penders case for comparison, how much of legitimate chance does he have at that $140 mil. max settlement? got to consider the lawyer seeing as they can be shady bulldogs at times too. its true that if Scott hasn't been getting royalties that he deserves them, but only for the amount that the statue of limitations should allow which is from what I'm hearing goes only back 3 years.

~Finally, I hope this doesn't effect the comic, we rebooted entirely thanks to Penders, lost everything. this is just about stuff that isn't even apart of the comic anymore and unpaid royalties, it shouldn't but thanks to Penders the unknown can be a bitch of a rugpull.

[Wittymations]

Welp. This is probably going to spell the end to the only bit of the Sonic franchise I remotely even like, anymore. Such a shame.

 

5 hours ago, SSF1991 said:

The following characters are listed by Fulop as his own ... Black Death,

Wait, Black Death? Huh?

[Ducktor Naldush]

6 minutes ago, WittyUsername 2: Revenge said:

Welp. This is probably going to spell the end to the only bit of the Sonic franchise I remotely even like, anymore. Such a shame.

 

Wait, Black Death? Huh?

THIS Black Death.

http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Death_(Sorcerer)

[DaddlerTheDalek]

I remember that Penders said that Fulop wanted to do something like this. Now it happened.

[Wittymations]

1 hour ago, Ducktor Naldush Repulsa said:

THIS Black Death.

http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Death_(Sorcerer)

Ooh. Right. Okay.

Forgot he existed.

[Dantemustdie00]

Should've known this would happen cause of those damn reprints of old issues. They should've left the old continuity comics completely alone.

Ugh, if Archie does go down cause of this, I hope IDW could get the rights and continue the comics, keeping Ian and crew on board. Assuming Sega would go allow it.

[RK64]

This sucks :(. I haven't read the new comics lately, but I read some of the newer ones and they were great! Hearing that the great work Archie has done might stop in the future is a bit sad, as I was looking forward to seeing how #281 and the next Sonic Mega Drive issue would turn out. 

If Archie caused this on themselves with the comic reprints, then they should have ensured there would be no issue doing that. I hope this gets resolved soon and has no impact on future issues. 

[Sonic The Badass]

6 hours ago, Ducktor Naldush Repulsa said:

THIS Black Death.

http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Death_(Sorcerer)

I thought this was the current Black Death which actually looks cool and laughed my ass off to see it's over a shitty character like that.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

9 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

Worst-case scenario is that we end up without a comic period.

More likely is a complete stop on any pre-reboot reprints in any format (ie not digitally either), so the only way to get them legitimately would be to hunt them down on eBay or Amazon.

This is gonna come off rather self-centered than intended, but if the pre-reboot prints stop, as much of a disappointment it'll be, given that there are other ways to read up on the pre-Genesis Wave stories that won't hurt the readerbase at least. Tho it will still carry some effects since that'll affect Archie's profits, wouldn't it?

I think it goes without saying we don't want the worst case to happen after coming this far. If Fulop wants these characters, then by all means he can have them. We don't have any use for them anymore.

[RetroRy]

And here is Ken posting the full letter I'm sure he technically isn't supposed to be posting on Twitter:

Don't worry.  I took screenshots when he denies he posted it in the future.

 

 

[Zaysho]

I think this is more relevant to the Fulop thread, so I'll go and pop it over there.

Also, I find the fact that there was never any kind of oral or written work-for-hire agreement on a licensed comic book very shady. I know Archie fucked up and lost a bunch of contracts, but something about it just doesn't add up or makes sense to me.

[Soniman]

It makes me so angry just thinking about it, Fulop hasn't worked on the book in 20 years and now he's looking for compensation after he saw how Jen made out like a bandit. It just feels so disingenuous like he probably wouldn't have cared if he didn't see Ken pill it off first and doesn't give a shit about the creators or readers behind the current comic and wants to screw everyone over even more like Ughhhh.

 I'm sorry but just reading this makes me so made I think I legit hate this person more then Ken because at least Ken was passionate about his shitty characters, Scott just screams wanting to make an easy buck