could someone explain what exactly happened between reiza and codemasters

[Tombprince]

I have recently learned about the incident in 2015 where codemasters essentially declared war on modders and f1 related media how exactly did it get to that point? Were these mods mainly straight up rips or were the modders trying to profit off of f1 in some manner? Why go after reiza as well?

 

[Kenny Paton]

Why go after reiza as well?

It was related to the F1 liveries being too close to the real thing.
Codemasters and F1 are very protective of their brand.

 

[BillGuy]

IMO the only way Codemasters could have gone after anyone with legitimacy would be if the “anyones” were directly lifting livery artwork or other assets from Codemasters game titles and redistributing them. Codemasters may have the exclusive rights to official F1 games, but I can’t imagine they actually own the intellectual property rights to anything from F1. They just have the exclusive license to use them.

Codemasters going after someone just because the work they produced was “too close to the real thing” would be analogous to my going after you because you pirated Microsoft Office and I paid for it. I don’t have legal standing in that situation because the IP for Office belongs to Microsoft, not me.

Now if Codemasters were simply making threats that they were going to report or otherwise "rat out" non-licensed uses of official F1 items to F1's own legal representation, that's a different story. But that wouldn't really be Codemasters directly taking action against modders or other developers.

 

[UMC 22]

Codemasters may have the exclusive rights to official F1 games, but I can’t imagine they actually own the intellectual property rights to anything from F1. They just have the exclusive license to use them.

This is actually a reason why a company may indeed go after another. They may not own the IP directly, but they've paid a lot of money to use it in their own products. So if someone else comes along producing similar content without a license, then it could directly impact on their income which is really going to annoy someone like CM. Even if they don't directly start proceedings, they're likely to inform the actual IP owner and get them to take care of it.

However, this particular issue was not "between" CodeMasters and Reiza as the thread title suggests. It was F1 themselves going after mods featuring F1 content. The mods in question updated older CM F1 games with the latest liveries, or added F1 liveries/content to Automobilista. It was websites and communities (like RD) that were ordered to remove the content, so it had nothing directly to do with Reiza to my knowledge.

 

[Gevatter]

However, this particular issue was not "between" CodeMasters and Reiza as the thread title suggests. It was F1 themselves going after mods featuring F1 content. The mods in question updated older CM F1 games with the latest liveries, or added F1 liveries/content to Automobilista. It was websites and communities (like RD) that were ordered to remove the content, so it had nothing directly to do with Reiza to my knowledge.

But Reiza had to change the liveries of their stock F1 content from colors that matched the cars of the day to something completely different (the Not-McLaren Liviery fot the V12 went from white-red to blue-yellow iirc), so something must have happened with Reiza directly, at least as a secondary issue.

 

[UMC 22]

I didn't know that. But regardless, it was just F1 throwing their weight around as usual, not an issue between Reiza and CodeMasters directly. F1 have always been that way with their IP, unlike most other motorsports brands.

 

[pavig]

All it takes is waving a lawyer in your companies direction at times. You may not be technically infringing on IP but the potential expense of arguing it in court is enough to scare any small company. Most will just tweak their product to avoid trouble rather than fight. Even if you win, fighting an IP suit is a money sink.

 

[Rodger Davies]

But Reiza had to change the liveries of their stock F1 content from colors that matched the cars of the day to something completely different (the Not-McLaren Liviery fot the V12 went from white-red to blue-yellow iirc), so something must have happened with Reiza directly, at least as a secondary issue.

Doesn't mean it has anything to do with Codemasters. F1 pay a huge amount of money to their teams for all the image rights to sell off as they choose, Reiza did something that was too close to infringing on that copyright. It's more likely F1's lawyers sent something saying 'make some changes or we'll take further action' but it's not really a big deal, they

Copyright isn't always black and white, you're basically infringing on it if a judge says "yes, you are trying to portray a copyrighted thing" which can be for any number of reasons. In Reiza's case, the liveries and car designs were so close to the real ones that it could have been reasonably interpreted as trying to portray F1, hence the discussion.

By the way, if Microprose's Formula One Grand Prix was released today, you can be damned sure that wouldn't get past the copyright lawyers either. It's not a black and white rule and it's not a fixed point in time, it's just different shades of grey.