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Blog RetroPie Victim of 'Stolen Identity'
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  • Author Author: cstanton
  • Date Created: 26 Feb 2017 12:27 PM Date Created
  • Views 2808 views
  • Likes 7 likes
  • Comments 13 comments
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  • emulation station
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RetroPie Victim of 'Stolen Identity'

cstanton
cstanton
26 Feb 2017

Almost everyone has heard of RetroPie.

 

image

 

The open source software which has enabled a bunch of Ikea tables with embedded Raspberry Pi.

 

Unfortunately, they've recently learnt a bitter lesson in trademarks, that unless you get there first, someone else can pull the rug out from under your feet, as the makers behind RetroPie call out for legal help.

 

image

 

Amazingly, someone from India has setup a website selling Raspberry Pi's with the software on the SDCards, something which is already against the license of RetroPie.

 

image

 

Furthermore, they're practically claiming RetroPie as their own, as they have filed a trademark in America (yes, even though they're from India) to lay claim to 'RetroPie' and 'Emulation Station'.

 

image

 

image

Allegedly the person behind this trademark registration has come out with his side of events and reasoning why they've done this:

 

image

 

 

So perhaps a word of warning, even if you're creating something open source, even if you're giving it out there and believe the GPL and licensing protect you, ultimately you cannot stop someone unless you've put measures in place to protect it first, and you're able to chase after them with the money necessary to hire lawyers/solicitors. A sour lesson, all the same.

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Top Comments

  • Former Member
    Former Member over 8 years ago +2
    That sucks, I hope if they're successful in resolving this they can pursue for damages made by the owner of the fake trademark for issuing those take down requests.
  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 8 years ago +2
    ... although they can be disturbing to you - with the trademark issues they are raising - they will not be long-lived though. None of the businesses that do faul play with open source have a significant…
  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 8 years ago +2
    Interesting conversation. While they want ot increase sales of retro games, and a case, etc there is no need to steal the name of an existing system and claim it as theirs. Hopefully they get what they…
  • matthawkinsuk
    matthawkinsuk over 8 years ago in reply to clem57

    Easy to find references to RetroPie being an SD Card image in 2013:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20130607061142/http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192

    The guy registering the trademark was probably still a fetus back then.

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  • clem57
    clem57 over 8 years ago

    Here is the trademark RETROPIE Trademark of Aditya Rawat. Serial Number: 87041177 :: Trademarkia Trademarks. If someone proves this to be false:

    First Use Anywhere:8/1/2015First Use In Commerce:12/1/2015

    Then trademark was incorrectly filed and someone else can lay claim on that basis. I am not a lawyer, but believe evidence can prove this as invalid. Anyone have it?

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  • gadget.iom
    gadget.iom over 8 years ago in reply to matthawkinsuk

    "Internal server error"

    Awesome! image

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  • matthawkinsuk
    matthawkinsuk over 8 years ago in reply to mcb1

    Their sham website appears to be having a few "issues" so I think Karma may have come a calling ...

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  • djfraz
    djfraz over 8 years ago

    Going by what the guy has said, that he wants to stop people profiting from using retropie as a pirating system, I can understand why he has take out the trademark and having the offending companies stopped. As I know that the general public like to generalize a couple of people using the system for pirate ROMs and take it that the system was designed for this purpose only, just look at the heat Kodi has gotten recently for the same reason.

     

    Although he has gone about it in completely the wrong way. If you want to stop people selling the system with pirate ROMs, contact the project and they can deal with it (at their discretion), or go through the marketplace that the person/company is using (eBay, Amazon, etc) and they can follow up on any issue regarding piracy.

     

    Hopefully the retropie team will have some success in having this dealt with before any major harm to the project happens. I think though that is is a shame that projects who have gained success in a short space of time have to deal with something like this, although I do believe that the GNU licence has their back (although I am not a lawyer and only going off what I know about it, feel free to correct me) 

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