Villains & Vigilantes Creators Win Settlement to Publish Game

After the longest court battle in the history of tabletop roleplaying games -- four years, eight months and 16 days -- the creators of Villains & Vigilantes have secured the rights to publish the game they created as teens in the 1970s. On Tuesday night, Jeff Dee and Jack Herman of Monkey House Games uploaded a version of the game to DriveThruRPG that included some new text in the copyright indicia (emphasis mine):

The Monkey House Games logo is a trademark owned by Monkey House Games. All characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned by Monkey House Games. Villains and Vigilantes is a trademark of Scott Bizar, used with permission.

This language is the first official sign that a settlement has been reached. I asked Dee for details, but all he was ready to say is that they are "pretty happy."

On July 27, 2011, Dee and Herman sued Bizar, the publisher of Fantasy Games Unlimited, for copyright infringement, asserting that his contractual right to publish their game had expired many years earlier and he kept this fact from them. The lawsuit began in Florida, moved to Arizona and ultimately reached the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. I covered the case in detail in two posts on this blog:

Villains & Vigilantes Creators Sue Game's Publisher, Aug. 4, 2011
Villains & Vigilantes Creators Win Rights to Game, March 18, 2013

Dee and Herman signed a 1979 contract with Bizar that gave them the game's copyright. A contract three years later to publish a comic book stated that Fantasy Games Unlimited owned the trademark. After Bizar stopped being a full-time game publisher in 1987, Dee and Herman tried for years to reach a deal to publish the game under the trademark, to no avail. Then in 2010, a fan of the game who is also an attorney discovered that Bizar had dissolved Fantasy Games Unlimited Inc. in 1991.

Under the contract, this reverted all rights to Dee and Herman, so they published the game as the newly formed Monkey House Games. Bizar disputed their right to do this, and thus began the titanic battle of the lawyers.

Dee and Herman prevailed in court when an Arizona judge ruled in 2013 that Bizar lost all of his rights to the game by selling zero copies of it from 1990 to 1994. The judge also ruled that Bizar never had rights to publish electronic editions or derivative works, two things he's been doing the past six years on the Fantasy Games Unlimited website.

Bizar filed an appeal and the case was taken up by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed in a July 7, 2015, ruling that Bizar had lost the rights to publish the game over 20 years ago:

[T]he contract expressly provided that the agreement would terminate by operation of law if FGU, Inc., ceased to do business for any reason. The agreement also prohibited the assignment of any rights under the contract without the written consent of the other parties. By the terms of the agreement, when FGU, Inc., was dissolved in 1991, all rights to the 1979 and 1982 Rulebooks reverted to Dee and Herman. Accordingly, all sales after the 1991 dissolution of FGU, Inc., of the 1979 or 1982 Rulebooks were infringing acts.

Despite this finding, the appeals court sent part of the case back to Arizona to decide whether Bizar still owned the trademark.

Dee, an artist well known for his illustrations on early Dungeons & Dragons books and supplements, has been producing new games and Kickstarter projects in recent years at a prodigious pace -- which I assumed was due to the costs of fighting this court battle. In September of last year, Dee asked fans for help with legal expenses on GoFundMe, receiving $26,755 from 523 people. He wrote this in the fund-raising appeal:

Our claim that the publishing rights reverted to us has been upheld in court, but our opponent still claims to own the trademark to our game's name and he's suing us for using it. If he wins on that count, he'll be able to seize our creation and financially ruin us. We've been fighting for our rights for several years, and frankly we need money in order to carry this battle to a final victory. We just want to get back to making our games!

As a fan going back 35 years, I'm glad the case is over and two of the first RPG designers finally can publish their best-known game. I was hoping that a court would pry the trademark out of Bizar, because it makes no sense that he'd have a claim on it, but the guy has a kung-fu grip.

If you'd like to reward Monkey House for fighting like crazy over 1,724 days in court to publish a game that isn't going to make anybody rich, Villains & Vigilantes is available as a printed book for $16.99 from Lulu and an ebook for $7.50 from DriveThruRpg.

Update: This story was edited to reflect that the trademark's ownership was in a 1982 contract, not the original 1979 contract.

Gaming · Roleplaying · Law · 2016/04/14 · 14 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

I was more of a Champions fan at that time, but glad to see all has worked out.

#1 · visitor · 2016/04/15

I'm psyched for the release of new V&V product from Jeff and Jack (and friends), but I am bewildered by the apparent "Trademark" decision. Either way, I hope this leads to V&V 3rd Edition coming out soon!

#2 · visitor · 2016/04/15

I've got to wonder if Bizar got the trademark, but has to license it for some nominal amount to Monkey House Games?

#3 · visitor · 2016/04/15

Played both Champions and V&V back in the day. V&V was a much better fit playwise for the pulp action hero games we were running at the time. But both were a great time.

Gland than this has worked out to the benefit of the creators. We need more positive endings like this in the art and gaming industry.

#4 · visitor · 2016/04/15

My site ate the names of people who commented on this. Sorry about that. I've fixed the bug.

#5 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2016/04/15

I was in an RPG session with Jeff Dee running the game a few years ago, at OwlCon. He used a version of V&V that was updated, smoothed out some of the rough edges. It was the best con game I can remember.

It's a shame such an absurd case took so long to prosecute.

#6 · John Bryan · 2016/04/15

Very glad to hear that the legal battle appears to be finally over! As a long-time player of V&V, I'm very much looking forward to the 3rd Edition as well!

#7 · Doug Taylor · 2016/04/15

"Win" Settlement? Settlements aren't won, are they? Winning a settlement sounds like winning a tie game.

#8 · Guy Fullerton · 2016/04/15

I'd call it a win when you no longer have to pay an attorney $2,500 a month and you can publish the RPG you created and have wanted to publish for decades.

#9 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2016/04/15

Why not then "FGU Wins Settlement ..." (no more attorney fees and own trademark) or "MHG and FGU Win Settlement ..."?

#10 · Guy Fullerton · 2016/04/15

I congratulate Jeff and Jack on their success, and wish them well on their future efforts.

I don't think, however, that the game is going to fit me any better now than it did in 1985 when I last played it... In some ways, I with Jeff's efforts were spent elsewhere, on things I am more likely to play. In others, I hope he enjoys his continued work on V&V...

#11 · Wil Hostman · 2016/04/16

Guy: I wrote a story that reflects my knowledge of the lawsuit after reading every court filing for over four years. Jeff Dee and Jack Herman won the right to publish their game, which is something they sought for decades. That was always the most important aspect of this case, and the reason I began following it.

If you have another take, great.

#12 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2016/04/16

Wil, if you want to check out Jeff's work on things you might enjoy playing more, check out his other RPGs Bethorm (set in Tekumel), Pocket Universe, and Cavemaster.

#13 · Dr. Cat · 2016/04/20

I'm glad that Jeff and Jack can move forward with their ideas and creations. FGU still owns the trademark; you should probably be clear about that since so many of the readers here seem confused.

#14 · James Bishop · 2016/04/21