Future Publishing Cleans Tim Langdell's Clock in UK Court

Though I think the real tragedy with people like Langdell is every time he pops up people overreact and it feeds into a very anti-IP sentiment,.. making people who have a legit case look like villains.  Even worse it turns a lot of indy developers away from legal tools that can really work to protect them.

No, Harvy Birdman has got nothing on this case.

To start off with, Tim Langdrell's "reliable" witness, a Mr. Jack Phillips, was declared to be a false persona made up by Langdrell. Langdrell did not supply any proof to counter that declaration.

Next up, and this is the best part, is that while Langdrell loved to sue people for simply using the word "edge", he himself was using the exact same logo (not just the name, but the logo itself) as EDGE Magazine, published by Future Publishing, which is what this lawsuit is about. So the trademark troll is himself breaching copyright laws.

This is altogether made worse by the fact that he tries to defend himself by claiming a multitude of things (this is a long list):

-First by claiming that because he had used it for years he was entitled to do so (shot down)

-Next was that Future Publishing couldn't copyright it because it was just the word typed out in standard font (also shot down)

-Next he claimed he was granted permission in 2005, despite the man he claimed gave the permission testified that was not the case (shot down)

-The next claim was that he intentionally breached copyright by sending a letter with their logo in the letterhead to challenge their copyright claim by saying that if they don't challenge it, it means they allowed it. (you guessed it, shot down. Honestly, it's like taking out clay pidgeons with a flak gun)

This brings us to the disks. Langdrell produced a pair of 5.25" floppy disks that supposely held the logo that he's no claiming he made in 1991, which would predate the magazine. An expert hired by Langdrell declared they were legit but an independant expert discovered they were made on a Windows 95 machine, meaning they could not have been created before 1995. After he was confronted with this, he then claimed that they were clones and later on he mysteriously produced a third disk that he claimed was the original with all the traces to the previous issues missing. The judge outright removed the third disk as evidence because of the possibility of it being created after the independant expert's report was made available. (In short, because of the issues of the first two disks, any further disks are considered tainted)

Here's the real kicker. Future Publishing paid Langdrell's company 250k and langdrell himself 25k to buy out all tradearks (which means all of Langdrells lawsuits since then are baseless because he didn't have the rights in the first place) though it all went to Langdrell's personal account (funny that...). Even after they paid, Langdrell used the magazines logo and even tried to trick customers into thinking his company makes the magazine (a letter to Apple stated specifically that) to garner revenue and access to services.

Finally, confirming what we knew all along, Langdrell tried to produce evidence of sales figures and partnerships with distributors to prove he was still making and selling games, but no distributor had corroborating evidence and no independant sales figures corroborating his own could be found.

So for the final rundown, Tim Langdrell has been commiting perjury for years to extort money from companies based on a trademark that he didn't have at the time and that he himself was abusing. I really hope that any company that he extorted reads that report and goes after him. I will happily see him a broken man when this train wreck he made comes at him full force.