The Lost and The Damned › MINIATURES! › Miniatures Discussion

Vermissian Infestors

Posted by

It looks like Heresy Miniatures is again coming worryingly close to stepping on GW's blue suede IP shoes.
What follows is this the concept art and WIP pictures of a range of miniatures called Vermissian Infestors.
Infestors are a race of six limbed aliens that use other lifeforms in their environment to
create an army of hybrid slaves ... yes that's right they are a race of genetic thieves

Ok I know what your thinking at this stage “yea they have 6 limbs, but don't they look that much like our
favorite race of xenomorphic spacehulk inhabitants ...” and I thought the same too until I saw this

^ I think we all know what miniature this sculpt looks like!

Now don't get me wrong here, I like Heresy Miniatures – I'd even go so far as to say they are my favorite
miniature company. The Infestors like most Heresy miniatures are awesome figures and whats more at the
moment I'm collecting together some miniatures to make a Genestealer cult for use in Spacehulk or
Necromunda so things like this are very welcome in my collection. -- my issue is this: if Andy comes too
close to infringing on GW's IP one too many times GW will probably break into his house and tear his wife in
half or something. Seriously though I'd hate to see GW sue the crap out of Heresy and put them out of
business and we loose some of the nicest miniatures around today.

I'm sure Andy must be aware of how close these sculpts come to GW copyrighted imagery, but none the
less he carries on dancing on the boarder of copyright infringement while a bunch of GW fan boys with little
understanding of IP constantly request that he sculpt Tyranids, Tau and Necrons on his forum.- As it
stands it looks like Andy may have already got in trouble with GW, recent visitors to the Heresy website
may notice that the 'Blight' plague-demons no longer come with the 'cyclops' heads (how ever you can buy
them separately still)

and finally before I go I thought I'd show you 2 more pictures from Heresy

11 Comments

Classic

List

Threaded

Scumdog47

Re: Vermissian Infestors

Yeah, it sure is provocative of him to create these designs.

Even though GW abandoned the Genstealer Cult way back, which is a pity since it was a cool concept, I can't blame GW for guarding their intellectual property.

But yeah, these minis sure look awesome...

BobbieTheDamned

Re: Vermissian Infestors

In reply to this post by MortiS-the-Lost

hmmm yeah those do look familiar...but in a rather good way!

The Magus especially looks very good.

If the hybrids turn out ok they'd be useful for spacehulk gaming especially as the GW hybrids are so damn expensive when they pop up on ebay.

MortiS-the-Lost

Re: Vermissian Infestors

I'm mostly sorted so far as hybrid's go, but my cult is going to need a Magus sooner or later, so I think I be ordering a Vermissian Prophet if/when they come out - my worry is the legal bitch-slapping Heresy may get if there not careful

-----------------------------------
~The ravings of a single mad Goblin is bad enough, but such a power-hungry, malice-filled creature as Mortis can never hope to be understood~

BobbieTheDamned

Re: Vermissian Infestors

ah well yeah they might prevent them from releasing them on the website but whether they'll still do them on the side is another matter.

MortiS-the-Lost

Re: Vermissian Infestors

Hmm I don't think thats really going to help us though

-----------------------------------
~The ravings of a single mad Goblin is bad enough, but such a power-hungry, malice-filled creature as Mortis can never hope to be understood~

Scumdog47

Re: Vermissian Infestors

This leads me to a few questions:

Are the designs copyright of the artist or GW?
It seems GW hold the most copyrights but is it always the case?

What of abandoned races and discontinued games?
*coughsquatscough*

BobbieTheDamned

Re: Vermissian Infestors

GW will hold the copyright of anything an artist does for them, its part of their contracts. Even if something isn't being used at the moment they'll still hold cany copyright/interlectual property over the designs and names.

precinctomega

Re: Vermissian Infestors

In reply to this post by MortiS-the-Lost

To my knowledge, Heresy never sold the cyclops heads along with their blight daemons.

Andy's models are based on original concept sketches and sculpted from scratch. Whilst they may owe a debt to GW inspiration - and no doubt will profit from GW's failure to support the Genestealer cult range - GW can hardly claim that the concepts or idea behind genestealers were original to themselves.

I'd say he was safe.

R.

MortiS-the-Lost

Re: Vermissian Infestors

The pre-order 'Blights' came with a selection of 3 heads including the Cyclops Heads, but shortly after the miniatures were released the Cyclops Heads were moved to the Spare Heads range which sprang out of nowhere. I think it's safe to assume some one at GW gave Heresy a phone call or letter and Heresy thus made this move to work around the IP issues.

While the basic concept of Genestealers (in so far as aliens that create human hybrids to reproduce) is not an original idea on the part of GW – they do own IP over the Genestealer imagery

-----------------------------------
~The ravings of a single mad Goblin is bad enough, but such a power-hungry, malice-filled creature as Mortis can never hope to be understood~

precinctomega

Re: Vermissian Infestors

Exactly where their IP rights over 'stealer imagery starts and ends is a question that would have to be determined by a judge, of course. Generally speaking, small companies like Heresy get a C&D letter form the GW legal department and, not having the financial clout of GW, they sensibly cave in.

I feel moved to add, though, that GW's attitude is rarely one of pantomime villain, demanding this and that. Generally speaking, they prefer to point out the elements of concern and make suggestions as to how the other manufacturer could consider altering their design in order to satisfy GW that no challenge to their IP was intended.

This was what happened with JMD miniatures' daemoness model and with Ultraforge's plague daemon. I believe it might have been a similar case with Heresy's cyclopean blight daemons.

R.

MortiS-the-Lost

Re: Vermissian Infestors

yea that pretty much what I figured

-----------------------------------
~The ravings of a single mad Goblin is bad enough, but such a power-hungry, malice-filled creature as Mortis can never hope to be understood~

Add a new comment