Breaking: Palladium Books sues Trion Worlds over "Rifts" title

Back at the end of April, we heard a fair amount of news from Trion Worlds, including the name change of Heroes of Telara. The name change came about during testing and development as the game's portals or "rifts" emerged as a central feature of the game, inspiring the new name Rift: Planes of Telara.

Evidently MMO fans weren't the only ones that heard this news. Palladium Books has filed a lawsuit citing trademark infringement of the name of Palladium's popular long-standing RPG, similarly titled "Rifts." If you're unfamiliar with the title, Palladium's version of Rifts is a PnP game centered around rifts that open on earth, exposing the players to monsters and elements from many other lands -- a very familiar concept. Rifts is Palladium's primary and most familiar IP, so they are understandably anxious to protect it.

Not much is known about the lawsuit at this point other than "it was filed." Basic details such as the parties involved and Palladium's sources are available, and we'll keep our eye out for more information over the next few weeks.

Reader Comments (34)

Now what would be ideal is if they came to a settlement, combined the two, and I could finally pilot a Glitter Boy or a Coalition SAMAS in an MMO.

For those of you who don't know Kevin, he's an okay guy, people on the net don't understand the whole story though. I have sat and chatted with Kevin on more than a dozen occasions(Not about this topic, I am just vouching that he is a good guy).

Think about this: If he lets any one use his IP his IP becomes "diluted." If it is overly "diluted" then it has no value as everyone and their mom could use it with out getting sued. The past 9-10 years, Kevin has been working on transforming his IP in to a movie and various video games. With that, he can not let the IP become "diluted" or else his movie and various video game deals go away and that hurts his potential bottom line.

Palladium books for the most part does try and respect other people's IP. As evidenced by the Palladium Books website's forum rules and their limited use internet license.

I personally would like to see Palladium come out on top of this one.

Man, I totally should have seen this coming.

Somewhat interestingly, Palladium has had this happen to them with their Nightbane line, which was originally called Nightspawn, before Todd McFarlane (and/or his lawyers) said, "Oh no, you don't."

Um. Kevin had produced a book called Nightspawn in 1973, long before Spawn was a twinkle in McFarlane's eye. They just didn't have the money to fight McFarlane on that one. McFarlane was wrong on that score - it was Kev who owned the name 'Nightspawn' within the context of what was published.

/Sub

Ha, its funny because the first time I saw an article on Rift: Planes of Telara, I immediately thought a RIFTS MMO was coming out, and I got a little giddy. RIFTS is an awesome setting, regardless of what anyone says. Very cool source material, and an interesting heavily-skill based PnP system.

However, I found that the rules need a lot of tweaking. Case in point: Megadamage.

But honestly, any GM worth his salt knows that modifications and house rules are par for the course. The RIFTS material is fantastic, and would make a great setting.

I personally loved my time playing Rifts. After D&D, it was the only one I played for years. The system was totally borked (yes, megadamage was a bad idea), but the setting was fantastic, and inspiring for a young mind. Some of my finest experiences as a young writer came from writing campaigns for Rifts. So much detail, anything was possible.

I know Siembieda has a checkered past when it comes to his games, and can be a bit of a lout. But having read about this game, I think he's well within his rights to proceed.

Agreed!

Hey Viking...I realize this is a bit of a thread necro...but I like your tone. Ive been running a long-term WHFRP play-by-forum game for the past year, and we recently lost a player.

Care to fill in? We post once a day...its a good time.

lordandtailor@gmail.com

shoot me an email

empireinblood.lefora.com

So change the game's name. The game has not even been released yet. It's not the name is what is going to attract people to it. I personally didn't see anything wrong with Heroes of Telara. HOT is a good acronym.

I think someone called this lawsuit when the name change was announced, cannot remember who though.

This does not start off this MMO well, but I hope in the grand scheme of things it won't affect Trion too badly. :/

So this isn't "Rifts World Book XX: Heroes of Telara"? I did play a lot of Rifts PnP game many years ago, but stopped once I got a hold of the D20 system in DnD 3.0 and also started to appreciate H.P. Lovecraft and playing Call of Cthulhu.

Too bad they never updated the cumbersome Palladium combat system. I liked having the same rules for all their different games, but it was not that much fun after getting a taste of the streamlined D20 system.

Although my rogue in DnD would have loved a vibro-knife.

I can't imagine Trion not expecting this. Not with all the geeks they have working on their games.

Rifts as a game boils down to houserules. The core system is really terrible, confusing, and contradictory. It takes a lot of GM effort to get the system playable. With that being said, the world and writing are fantastic. The developers really do love their game, and even though they have no clue how to make a balanced roleplaying game, they really have a lot of love for the world they've created and it shows in their writing.

That being said, Palladium has been sitting on the trademark since 1990, and it is their primary moneymaker. Most likely this will end in a settlement and HoT will have to change their name.

Palladium books aren't likely to win this one. Its hard to protect single word trademarks especially rather common words without a lot of money, which Palladium books simple doesn't have. I doubt that Trion Worlds in any way actually thought about stepping on Palladium books pen and paper RPG its name change seems to simply meant to be more memorable than the previous name. Palladium books lawsuit against Trion is rather shaky and likely motivated by wanting to grab money more than anything. I won't be surprised if soon we hear that this was thrown out of court.

Breaking: Palladium Books sues Trion Worlds over "Rifts" title

Reader Comments (34)

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:53PM Regault said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 6:49PM NekoDaimyo said

Posted: Jun 9th 2010 12:44AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 11th 2010 7:25PM Birk said

Posted: May 11th 2010 8:05PM ScottishViking said

Posted: May 11th 2010 8:14PM Birk said

Posted: May 13th 2010 1:46PM Birk said

Posted: May 12th 2010 12:20AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 12th 2010 2:26AM Cendres said

Posted: May 12th 2010 12:16PM Goldenspiral said

Posted: May 13th 2010 12:14PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 13th 2010 12:42AM Patrick Mackey said

Posted: Jun 25th 2010 6:04AM (Unverified) said

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