MG: For the Record

[Karol Boyle <karol@...>]

We think the over 200 people on this group deserve to know our prospective
and intentions for the record.

MG has been part of the piecepack community from the very beginning. We took
on the responsibility of maintaining piecepack.org and have maintained it as
an impartial clearing house for information about and games for the
piecepack. We have always strived to support the individuals within the
community as well as promoting the piecepack concept, this Yahoo! Group
forum, piecepack.org as well as the Wiki.

Our goal is not to hurt the community in any way - it is to protect our
investment and products, and yes, to keep our incentive to develop new items
for our piecepack line and for the community.

I, personally, don¹t understand why anyone would be upset that MG
trademarked our new expansions or even the patent on Pawn Saucers. Trademark
is there to help companies create and maintain brand name identification. It
could be confusing to see a 4 seasons expansion come out from 2 places,
especially for the public who are not a part of this forum or do not know
the history.

I'd like to give a brief overview of what goes into creating a piecepack
expansion here at Mesomorph Games (MG):

We start with a concept, develop the details of the suits/icons - artwork is
created by hand, scanned in, digitally modified and sent to be made into
rubber stamps. Ink is selected to match as closely as possible to pawns
used, materials are purchased (wooden pieces, pawns, packaging, etc.), coins
and tile backs are marked by hand. Coins, tiles and dice are then stamped by
hand and several coats of "sealer" are applied. Packaging art/text is
created, photos are taken, web content is written and the website is
changed. All promotional materials are changed to incorporate the new items.
There are many other details that are addressed during this process - I just
wanted to give you an idea of the time and effort involved.
Besides piecepack manufacturing/retail, MG also develops other ideas and
spends a considerable amount of time on the promotion of the piecepack
concept and maintenance of all aspects of piecepack.org - benefits to the
community as a whole.

We have put a lot of effort into the products we make, why wouldn't we do
what we can to protect them? After all we are in business to make a profit.
So, yes, the artwork is copyrighted and the names of our products are
trademarked. If you understand copyright and trademark you know that you can
make your own versions of the sets as long as they don't use the same images
or brand names. I'd think that others would want to be different from MG to
stand out and fill their own niche instead of copying what we do and sharing
ours.

We hope that this statement will clear things up and that this group can
return to more constructive and germane discussions.

Thank you for your time.

Karol Boyle
Mesomorph Games (MG)