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The Terrible Tale of Tim Langdell
Date 6/5/2009    Tags Rant    (0)

English born Tim Langdell is an author, a university professor, CEO of Edge Games, and in my humble opinion, a huge jerk (along with some other choice words that I really shouldn't repeat).

Edge Games was founded in 1979 as a small game development studio in London, England before moving to Pasadena, California in 1990 (thus successfully escaping a court ruling to pay several programmers they had stiffed). Originally the company was named 'Softek Software' but was latter changed to the more edgy Edge Games moniker.

Along with this change in name came Langdell's biggest claim to fame (name one game his company has produced, I'm sure you cannot), the apparent trademarking of the four letter word 'Edge' for any and all purposes (likely this occurred around the year 1984).

Most recently, the popular puzzle game "Edge" was pulled from Apple's App Store after Langdell complained hard and long enough to them (full story). The makers of this game, Mobigames, then tried to compromise and rename the game Edgy, but as soon as Langdell heard this news, he promptly trademaked the word 'edgy' too, thus further cementing his status as a huge douchebag.

Perhaps the biggest know case involving Langdell was that of the Soul Edge series of games, which results in several version of the game being renamed to Soul Caliber before the lawsuit was dismissed in 2002.

The lawsuit against EA for their game Mirror's Edge video game may be the most bizarre of all these situations. Edge Games apparently has a game in development called Mirrors, which they are now marketing as "Mirrors (a new game from) Edge" with the text "a new game from" in a tiny font, making it appear that this game is called Mirrors Edge (thus bolstering their claim of IP confusion to the courts).

There are several other cases involving Langdell as well (and likely more that are not publicly disclosed). Cybernet's game 'Edge Of Extinction', the magazine Edge (which Langdell is paid licensing rights), computer manufacturer Velocity for their 'Velocity Edge' gaming PCs (they settled out of court and now Langdell claims them to be an 'Edge Brand Venture'), the Edge series of comic books by Malibu Comics, and even the 20th Century Fox movie The Edge. I'm not even going to get into the claims that Langdell himself has been deliberately editing his own Wikipedia page in order to hide his sinister ways.

It is clear from these cases that Langdell has a pattern of targeting anyone that uses the word 'edge' in a desperate cash grab (probably because his company isn't known for his games). Unfortunately in today's society, the cost of fighting a legal battle like this, despite the high probability of success, is often more expensive (and very time consuming) than to simply settle the case or change the offending name. Scum like Langdell know this and will continue to prosper from it.


Extra Bonus Content
There is a lot going on right now reguarding Langdell. I'll add extra pieces I find below as I find them (too hard to try and work thing into the story above).

Email from a former developer for Edge Games:
"I had to get a lawyer to get them [Tim and Cheri] to pay me the money they owed me for Fairlight. They refused to pay me, unless I signed up to make more games for them. As a result, Fairlight II was released without


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