I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk, sent lawyers, guns and money, dad get me out of there, ha! Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, your host of this podcast. Today I'm joined by my normal co-host in the basement studio, Alex the Waterboy. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good, Alan. How about yourself? Pretty good. Pretty good. We got a good show tonight because we're going to talk about a very interesting subject that I don't think a lot of people know of. It was brought to our attention by a great regular who's going to be our guest this evening. But in 1990, Gottlieb, under the trade name Premier at the time, released a pretty unremarkable pinball machine called Silver Slugger. It was one of their kind of series of what they called street-level games that they were marketing as a cheaper and easier-to-maintain type of throwback pinball machine without all those newfangled ramps and mechanical doohickeys that were coming out. Yeah, it's kind of a good idea in theory. something that we love in theory and some of the games are really good some of the games are good actually they sold fairly well i think so it was a meager success but the theme of silver slugger was a weird kind of futuristic baseball not too futuristic like it still looks like a baseball game at first glance but like the players are like kind of robots but it's still it's still like on green grass yeah but it's a game that is mostly forgotten about most listeners probably have never even heard about it, but it was released by Gottlieb, who by this time was just a shell of their former selves, that they had been bought and sold and repackaged so many times by the time they released this game that they were hard to even recognize as the same company that was founded by David Gottlieb all the way back in 1927. Columbia Pictures bought them at one point, Coca-Cola bought them. They were kind of like shopped around as like a shiny new toy and then thrown away. But by the time they released Silver Slugger in 1990, this completely unassuming pinball machine they had been on life support for almost a decade and sadly they closed up shop for good six years later in 1996 you might be wondering why are we talking about silver slugger what is this a whole episode of a podcast well for some reason this game was chosen to be in a very small scene in the 2000 movie what women want starring mel gibson and helen hunt and we look for any excuse to bring up mel gibson on this podcast it only has a brief appearance in the background of a scene, but it clearly caused a stir with the Gottlieb rights holders as they chose to sue Paramount Pictures, alleging copyright and trademark infringement. Today, our guest Nate Taylor is here to tell us this story that he first heard when he was in law school. So welcome to the show, Nate. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're happy to have you here. Nate's a longtime regular of Wedgehead. Like you mentioned, he's in law school. And most importantly, he's only one degree removed from, you know, local legend Campbell, who we're going to land that fish for the show one day. Oh, yeah. We're going to get him tied down one day. Got to get him quick. Nate, I would just want to talk briefly about this is a weird out of left field lawsuit that we're going to dive deep into. You found out about it through, you know, when you were in law school, this was just something that sort of landed in your studies and you had to like put two and two together and you're like, wait, what? The pinball company got leave? Yeah, so I kind of got into pinball while I was into law school. Of course, we had it growing up, and it's everywhere back in the 90s. But, you know, kind of fell out. I'm from the middle of nowhere in Virginia, so they just kind of started disappearing. I can't get anywhere back home. Move out here, I get back into pinball. Such a great relief, you know, law school, pound, pound, pound. And then I'm in copyright class. Gottlieb Pinball pops up. I'm super excited. And spoiler alert, Gottlieb just gets dunked, completely dunked on this entire. It's only a couple pages. It's short. It's sad because it's one of the last things we really, you know, see from Gottlieb. Yeah. Yeah. This was a death spiral of Gottlieb for sure. They never got to make that Brooks and Dunn game they were working on. Yeah. This is it. So for the listener, Alex is mentioning the last game that was set to be in production that they never made out of prototype was Brooks and Dunn got cancelled because the company went out of business. If you look at a lot of these games that they were making at this time, it's kind of no... It's not surprising that they went out of business. Barbed wire is sick. We got a lot of world. Very cool. Matt Frank Thomas' Big Hurt. Got on the floor right now, Wedgehead. Actually pretty fun. Some of these games are fun, but they didn't do well. They certainly weren't selling big numbers. But I think we should rewind back a little bit just for the listener that may not fully understand there's a lot of people that only think about Gottlieb as a punchline to a joke in pinball but really like I said in the intro David Gottlieb started the company in 1927 he and they were the name in pinball for at least three maybe four decades they were driving the bus yeah a longer run than any company has had including Stern which has you know been a monstrous run since like the 2000s or whatever they've been dominating. Gottlieb, though, was just like the only, I don't know, I guess everybody was selling big units back then, but they were definitely the flagship. And it's just funny how the mighty fall. It just seems to happen over and over. Like I said, Gottlieb, this is a story that's too long to tell in this episode, but they got bought and sold. They were, this was at the time when they, when Columbia Pictures bought them, which is why I think it's interesting bringing up this movie license a different movie studio than the one that used to own a pinball company is suing them for copyright infringement i want to get into the movie like do you all have to have you all seen what women want no no i've seen the scene i've watched it because of law school i've looked at it several times because just gotta go see it when you in context of the in context to the lawsuit Dude, it's incredible. Okay, so the movie itself is pretty terrible. I saw it when it came out. Well, I had it on VHS, I think, or my mom rented it. It's a Nancy Meyers movie. She makes popular kind of rom-com movies, and it's about a guy, Mel Gibson in this case, who's like just kind of a shitty, yeah, playing himself, playing a shitty guy. Like he's a chauvinistic kind of just player, asshole. Like he's rich. she thinks he's the best thing that's ever happened to anybody uh and then he has like a freak like blow dryer in the bathtub accident scene nice and that causes him to wake up and now he can hear the the inner thoughts of every woman on earth it's like a comedy except i don't think mel gibson's ever been funny like ever but he's like the lead and now with 24 years later we have the added reminder of what a kind of piece of shit human mel gibson actually is in real life so maybe he was just preparing for the role it's just like deep preparation ruin lethal weapon and maverick yeah but this is not a good guy oh but that's a callback yeah because now this is tangentially another pinball machine where mel gibson is related he's not in silver slugger Everything comes back to Mel Gibson on the spot. But yeah, it's a goofy movie. It's not well regarded. But what's interesting is that movie was released in 2000 by Paramount. And then, Nate, when does this lawsuit get brought? Yeah, it comes in 2008. And that's relevant because with most lawsuits, there's usually a statute of limitations, which is just a period of time. You have to bring a case before it's out for just timing reasons to serve justice and all sorts of other reasons. This is not a love podcast. Yeah, that's three years for a copyright suit. This is eight years after the movie came out. How did they get that leniency? Now, I can't remember the exact year, but at the end of all this fun Gottlieb timeline history, Gottlieb kind of gets the company back from Coke. And they I think what they've done. This is just my guess. I I cannot find definitively where this came from. But there's this thing called the discovery rule, which will hold the time that you have to bring the lawsuit if you could not have discovered the infringement beforehand. So so they just had to maintain the fact that they didn't watch this. There wasn't a movie release. This Mel Gibson, Helena, rom-com blockbuster. You know we're dunking on it. It was still everywhere. Everybody's probably heard of it. You should have known about it. This is not secret. Yeah, I don't. But I guess it could be argued. I mean, like, how can you prove someone hasn't seen something? It's insane, but, like. Yeah, I think that's the mindset. And they're probably arguing that, oh, look, Coke with their premiere games are just, they're not paying attention at all. They don't care about the brand. they're just pushing out barbed wire and mario andretti this is i'm assuming that's it like i like i said i can't find it definitively but that's my idea is that they're arguing oh we we just now got back into pinball okay so now take us into the mind of like they're filing a lawsuit in 2008 for a movie that came out in 2000 for a game that came out in 1990 so by the time this lawsuit is brought not only has gotley done making games completely but the game in question was a game they released 18 years ago yeah so it doesn't really matter when the game came out itself that i mean it will but the like the length of copyright is just so far yeah just 100 years down the road yeah yeah well that might be an issue but i think it's really it has to be the discovery rule i just i don't want to put myself into or make them out to be malicious or anything but seems like a kind of the last ditch effort to try to make as much money off trying to make money off the gut yeah they're just kind of cashing in with what they have at their disposal which is literally the name yeah the limited ones other than this there is there's actually a really nice website I can't remember the URL right now. That is somebody has compiled all the instances where a game of pinball has appeared in a movie. It's really extensive. It's like four or five pages long. You click through. Awesome. I really hate that I can't remember what it is. There's a Facebook group called Pinspotting where people just post pinball machines and anything. And this kind of shit happens constantly. Yeah. Like every single... And some studios are good about putting a different translate in or putting tape over logos. John Youssi that occasionally. It's always funny. John Youssi them blurred too. when you're watching a movie too even if you can make out like i watched a netflix movie that had a couple pins in and actually rodsey was going to put those pins in they ended up going with somebody else i think but they needed it for this scene and uh this rich kid has a basement and they have some pinball machines and they're like metallica and acdc they wanted like band rock and roll pins but when the games are being played it's just like bells and chimes which as a pinball head you know like it's like generic old pinball sounds from like 50 years ago but they have to do that in the movie yeah for copyright issues even with that you do see a lot of like recognizable games or not you know not censored games in like a lot you can see it in like dazed and confused you can see a bunch of them don't go after it when was the last time you saw a gottlieb though one of those that's a good that's the real point is i think this is it this is like they found the only the only one that's getting put in games so they had to go with silver slugger that you gotta you gotta dance with the one that got you there i want you to explain as a student of law and a soon-to-be lawyer i imagine barring the bar but yes yes nate we're recording this nate has taken the bar and we're waiting to hear how he did but we're all assuming that you will be a lawyer and i just need you to explain to us and to the listener because i think we're all lay people here what is the plaintiff's legal theory here this is copyright infringement just standard you have taken my images and you have put them in this movie what they're basing this off is called a it's a lawsuit ringgold versus black entertainment television maybe you've maybe you've heard of yeah Yeah. In this case, Ringgold was an artist and she had one of her works appears in the background of one of the episodes. It appears for a substantial portion of the episode. It's in the background. If you know the work of art, you can recognize it. So it's a substantial part of the show. Substantial part of the show. Kind of the theme of the art matches the theme of the episode. They're putting all this stuff together in a way that they've incorporated, you know, the art into it. 27 minutes in the Ringgold case, I think, is the amount. Or 27-minute episode, 12 minutes of it, something like that. Okay. This case, the Silver Slugger, appears for not too dissimilar a total length. you know the differences we'll get to the differences later but so that's kind of where they're coming from they see this ring gold case it looks a whole lot like something maybe that they might get in here well look you guys can't see us back home but we have pictures of the play field up here they brought infringement for the back glass the play field there's something else i think maybe easy layout i think also was the other thing even though that seems interesting design patent thing to me but is the is the idea that they're like got leaves like you guys made money using our product it just seems such like an arbitrary so frivolous to us it's a public when it's a public like it's a product that was purchased and put in public to me it's a commercial product it's a commercial product it shouldn't it's just such an odd distinction because i know pinball machines are like pieces of art there's artists that have like worked on it but it's a commercial product i didn't realize that a commercial product i guess i know there's some censorship but it's like John Youssi cars in movies and i'm sure they're not paying for every car and I know sometimes they debadge the cars. Yeah, it depends. A lot of times the cars John Youssi in movies are paid for. They're paid to specifically have those. Yeah, but when you're watching, like, CW11, not every, you know, 2005 Camry in the back, like, in the background shot has been cleared, I assume. So it's just, like, where do you draw the line? Yeah, well. That's what we get into. Yeah, that's the whole, that's where it all hinges on. But kind of getting to your point, there is this thing, like, you buy a book, you can share a book, You can do what you want with that copy. Obviously, you can't make more copies and sell it. But that book is yours to do with what you want. That's a property, right? You'd think you'd be able to do it. But once again, the works of art thing, it does. There are both sides of it. And obviously, you can copyright these gorgeous, you know, pinball. I like how you swallowed on that one. I just stopped looking at that. The silver plucker. I just don't know if I can finish this sentence. If it was a Greg Ferrer's package, it would have been easier to get out. I love this. It would have been easier to get out. But Silver Slugger. Nate means in general. Pinball machines can have amazing art, and this is a pinball machine. Yes. It can be argued that it's art. Silver Slugger is a pretty fun-looking game. It's not a work of art in the way we would traditionally use the phrase, but it is a pinball machine with art on it. Yeah, there we go. And then we'll kind of get to the other side of it. that we were just talking about, Paramount just said, no, this is de minimis use, which means minimal amount legalese. Okay. Yeah, and that just means we're using a small part in a way that is unsubstantial to the amount. It's a little bit different than fair use, which I could get into the big differences. Fair use is a much broader, you're using it for specific purposes, or you've transformed it for a different means, like parity and all these other things. It's not quite that level. De Minimis means it's just the car in the background of what that's blurred out and you're not seeing it. It's not an artistic expression. It's just something to fill the background. Kind of describe another case that shows what Paramount said. Sandoval versus New Line Cinema in the movie Seven. What's in the box? Everybody knows Seven. When they're in the killer's house, there's a bunch of pictures hanging up in the background. Can't really tell what they are. They're just kind of flashing in the back for a couple seconds. Unlike the Ringgold case, they're not central to it. They're just kind of back there. The person who took the pictures recognized their pictures immediately. The court said, no, you're the only person in the world that'd be able to recognize that. No one's watching the movie to see those pictures. Yeah, exactly. That's not what they're paying for. Exactly. It's so small. It's so trivial. It's a flash. It's blurry. It's in the background. it's it's merely set dressing that they could have picked any picture and it wouldn't really have changed the impact of what they put on their kind of deal and they were successful in that and they were successful uh new line cinema didn't get in trouble sandoval did not win the case okay so we have god i can't remember plaintiff and defendant or crack plaintiff is saying like oh you made money off of our sick ass silver slug yeah people wanted to see pinball legend he's been in two pins at this point people associate mel gibson with pinball they want to go see his his new pinball movie uh what women want pinball and known for its own table of course and the defendant is saying like no fuck off this is what was the word correct word oh de minimis yeah de minimis use yeah then it's up to the court this shows how little i know about a lot does this go to a jury or does like one guy just gonna be like what the fuck got leap i gotta be honest like pretty much all i know about law is like judge judy well i oh okay well i'm a little bit old her i guess for me it's my cousin vinny i know everything about law from watching my cousin vinny so isn't that the one with uh marissa tomei i only know isn't that the one with marissa yeah she won an oscar the only thing i know about my cousin vinny is from the episode of seinfeld where george gets hooked up with marissa tomei and he's re-watching the movie that's the only thing i know my god we gotta watch this movie dude well it's got joe pesci he's also a pinball legend he's also on lethal weapon yes he is yeah he is and helen hunt who's starring opposite in this movie that we're talking about what wouldn't want she's also in twister which is also good okay so perfect where are we our experience with law is did this go oh yeah the church yeah no so you're gonna request a jerk you need to request a jury trial i don't think either part of you would want a jury i don't think you're probably going to be able to find peers for gotley pinball and Paramount Pictures, you can, but I personally would, if I'm doing this level of money that I'm trying to get, I not going to request it be in the hands of just people I want the judge to make that decision because I don know maybe maybe Gottlieb was like weak and convinced some very dumb people that this is this is the case But I don't think that he go to jury and go to jury. No, no. This it actually got dismissed. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because they presented the evidence and the judge said no, absolutely not. Yeah. How long into the process did it get dismissed? So they're presenting evidence the amount of time into the whole process. This is relatively early. It's going to be before they're making their their big, you know, speeches and doing all the fun stuff. This is really you gather all the evidence. You make your initial pleadings. You show, hey, look at this. I'm making a motion to dismiss as a matter of law. If you look at the facts and you you look at the evidence in most favor in the favor of the person who is going to be affected in the favor of Gottlieb in this situation and the judge, the evidence and if as a matter of law they look through the law and says there's no way that it's going any other way than this then they'll just dismiss it's right there that's what happened in this case because it's pretty obvious is there like a legal is there like a specifics i know this is based off the legal precedent of that whatever the bet case yeah is there like a specific number that they have where they're like this many minutes or is it completely a judgment call um no de minimis and fair use is not codified in the copyright act so what does codified mean there's no code there's no section there's no definition this is just it's evolved out of case case law and the way we've approached it there's been debates in like even up to the supreme court level whether discovery the discovery doctrine the fair use doctor all this stuff has been contested because it it's not in the law and so certain people if it's not in the letter of the law don't want it to be applicable at all and other people say it's just too too murky and unactual um to do this sort of stuff which is in more and more so a legal reality um just to kind of get on a soapbox and slightly pull this away for a second uh in the modern age we're making copyrighted stuff all the time like right now any picture we take any doodle anything we do with our phones almost creates a copyrightable something and we share it on instagram we make youtube videos yeah we're not copywriting those instagram posts we're not copywriting those youtube videos we're not i'm not gonna say to copy these but i'm assuming y'all don't copyright your your podcast no our podcasts aren't copyrighted i mean technically they are you have a copyright in them you haven't filed them so you can't bring suit but that's oh there we go yeah yeah so we can talk later on once i'm past the bar we can uh this is not legal advice i need a real quick disclaimer nothing i'm saying is legal advice i'm not your lawyer i'm not holding myself out as a lawyer i'm merely somebody who's been to law school and that's it please do not rely on anything you've heard here today in any sort of legal case this is like highly important sorry sorry oregon state bar sorry washington state bar i am not holding myself out as a lawyer i think that should be a get enough disclaimer on that oh we're cutting that oh no oh no it's funny lawyers always get into that that's how i know you're gonna be a lawyer nate just because you always go right into it you're always like now i can't tell you this but now i'm gonna tell you some shit nothing is binding i'm probably wrong yeah i like that yeah i mean that's all interesting because it's like i just look at it like us and what we're doing right now is a pinball podcast and like it's a goofy pinball podcast we release it for free there's no money involved we do this on our own time yet some people look at that as like and i use clips of songs to intro the the show oh no which will get taken down i guess we'll get ceased and desisted i don't know i don't how much of the song are you using how long are you yeah exactly is it a purpose like what's the purpose yeah exactly i and i did notice you used uh you talked about junkyard and you had money that's what i want in the intro so i don't know you should be fine very short well and it's i mean we're a we're a low-level pinball podcast i doubt anyone cares oh and if they do care modify check start rolling in dude we're gonna get that joe rogan deal if they do care what's that parody law we got to get on we'll have alex sing a fake version of all the songs i've used for our previous intros and then it'll be parody yeah there's fair use which is not codified which we As you would know, it's not codifying. We all know that. There's actually some disagreement here. There's two trains of thought. It's a legal term, I think. But I'm not a lawyer, so take that with a grain of salt. I'm not sure where we want to move from here. Yeah, I'm going to kind of skip over the trademark part because that's like in the case law. So the whole thing kind of got dismissed because trademark is essentially how likely are you to assume that the person endorsed the product. Now, I do see one argument that with all the product placement, like we talked earlier, maybe the idea is, oh, they think that we paid to put our pinball machine in the movie. Yeah, they don't want to be associated with. And it reflected bad on them because it's a bad movie. Bad movie, I guess. Yeah, like if you used it, if you were to use Silver Slugger in a movie that was just like straight up like, you know, hate crime propaganda, if it was used for even the similar amount of time, that would probably get a little more like attention from the courts, right? It wouldn't be dismissed so quickly. Yeah. Because it's like you don't want to associate. Whereas with this, it's like, well, this is a harmless association. So that's why the whole thing comes off as a joke. Yeah, I just don't think anybody would look and be like, oh, yeah, Gottlieb, the company that went out of business at this point 12 years prior. It was paying to put their pinball machines in the movie. I just don't. I have the things for a trademark. You just look at them. You're like, there's just no way. It's not even. Not arguable. So this kind of earmarks the end of Gottlieb in a weird way, because like we said, this lawsuit was brought and then dismissed 18 years after the game in question was in a movie. Right. After that game was manufactured. 12 years after Brooks and Dunn was canceled. Right. Which was supposedly, yeah, RIP. That'll be the intro, dude. We'll do a Brooks and Dunn saw Neon Moon. But fair use, dude. Or like in a parody way. Yeah, in a parody way. It's ironic. What's weird is like who owns the Gottlieb rights right now? Pinball Life? No, no, no. Sorry, not Pinball Life. Steve Young and the Pinball Resource. Pinball Resource. So for the listeners, if you have a Gottlieb machine, you may have already realized this, but your normal pinball resellers who sell pinball parts and replacement parts, you can't get Gottlieb replacement parts. You can get some sometimes. Yeah, if it's standard, you know, really bog standard stuff that wasn't patented or whatever. Patented, I guess, yeah. I don't know. But you have to buy it from Steve Young, Pinball Resource, who is a great pinball resource. It's got a funny way of, like, you still have to send him checks. He does have a website. It's done very old school. He's very old school. And what you'll notice is if you're working on Gottlieb games of a certain era, unlike every other machine where you can go on and find a PDF file of a manual or a schematic into the Internet Pinball database to help you out if you're trying to work on your games, with Gottlieb, you have to go on and you have to buy a manual. You can buy a used copy on eBay or whatever at a pinball show. But if you want access to one, you can't just go online and look at it. You have to pay for it, and it'll get sent to you. which means that, in my argument, is that some of these games just don't get fixed. Some of these games don't get restored. Almost seems like, I mean, right, you get into, like, right-to-repair laws, and that has been a big thing with, like, Apple recently. That's the only things I ever see in the news anyways, right-to-repair with Apple, and, like, being able to replace a battery on a cell phone. And it kind of, to me, could be argued that not giving access to manuals, like, impedes on my right to fix an old Gottlieb machine. What do you think about that? I think that's maybe one way to go about it. I would also see I'm going to sue Steve Young. Yeah, there you go. No, no, no, no. Bring it on. Yeah. A few months. Wait till I'm wait till I'm barred and we'll do this. Kind of going back to fair use. One of the fair use exceptions is for educational purposes. So if you are sharing copyrighted materials for the purpose of educational reasons, such as the distribution of medical journals to doctor's offices, which has been what about downloading textbooks god sorry that made me spit take a little bit no they're good luck on that one but um now's now's a good time to say that we are in fact the witch hit pinball podcast is an educational podcast yeah of course meant to share knowledge of the pinball hobby i mean to what degree this episode is educational in any use of now i don't know if we can get away with using that for the brooks and dunn song but all the other purposes that we're going through if we were to share these images it would be for an educational purpose because we're trying to explain this situation which is news public information not it is there's no copyright we're not talking about a novella or a short story or something that somebody wrote this is a real life there i don see why though in these Once again I not a lawyer Please do not sue me And I extremely sorry if I destroy your business model here That's not my intention. But I think certain things like I don't think you'd get in trouble as a non lawyer who's not telling anybody to do this. I really don't do that and say Nate said you could do that. But I think there is – you could push it from these – It could be argued. Yeah, it definitely could be argued. Please don't give this in. I'm just already regretting saying all this stuff. No, once again, it's look into it. Talk to your own lawyer who knows these things. Speak with a lawyer. Yeah, speak with a lawyer. That's like the number one legal advice I can give you, and that's not just self-promotion for the industry. Like, if you have a question, ask a lawyer, because you might save yourself a lot of trouble in these sort of things. Yeah, I'm learning that all of this is very context dependent. Yeah. If it's not been codified, codified. Yeah, whatever. Same thing. I probably say it weird because I'm from a remote part of America. You're not a big city lawyer. You're not one of them big city lawyers. I'm just a small town. He's like a Brooks and Dunn kind of lawyer. Yeah, I'm a Brooks and Dunn. There is nothing small town about Brooks. I know some people that used to live next door to them. They are one of them. I don't know which one it was. Not definitely not small town. Now, that's the thing I'm going to get sued about is disparaging Brooks and or done like this boy saying we're not small. We're going to prove it in a court of law. I think this was just a fun little episode about a little piece of pinball history that I don't think a lot of people know about. I certainly didn't know about it. It's just sad that this is like the legacy of Gottlieb. It's like the titan of the industry for so long. And then it kind of was passed around, like we said. Yeah, like a hot potato. Nobody wants it really. Bill Starr, premiere. It goes out like fighting for the scraps in a Mel Gibson forgettable shit show. Like, not a good look for Gottlieb. And it's funny, but it does hurt a little bit being like, oh, that's what happened? You named the bar after it. Yeah. This is the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. Oh, God, dude, if he owns the name Wedgehead. No, I believe Wedgehead was always a colloquial term. yeah colloquial small town term it was never a trademark term by gottlieb it was the brooks and dunn name for alligators yeah it was a nickname for the single player designs but yeah i think it was a fun episode that i wanted to do with a with a local friend of wedgehead local regular local not a lawyer local not a lawyer not giving out any legal advice giving any legal advice please once again i'm just keep saying this because they keep saying they're going to cut this out so if i don't say it every five minutes i just can't i just have to guarantee one of these makes it it makes it makes it through the cut there's a lot of pinball lawsuits over the years and i'd be interested in us doing future episodes together and cover some of the big ones once the dust has settled on deep root i would love to get into that shit because that's the yes yes that's by far the fun one now the haggis thing has been entertaining we see it just recently We've been seeing so much, like, I don't know, goofy stuff with these boutique companies popping up and getting investors and then running out. So it would be fun to dive into more of it. Now you're talking about fraud cases, which has never been the case as far as I know in pinball history. Usually it's different manufacturers stealing somebody else's new patented mech, new advancement in technology. and then their whether it's stern electronics copying the solid state board system that valley was using and then they had to go to court it's happened numerous times over the decades as far as like even when capcom pinball tried to make a run at it run at the throne williams was like you can't use these type of flippers because it looks like ours and these are patented so they had to redesign every piece to make their pinball machines increase it's just insane that same thing happened in video games epic games destroyed silicon knights uh for using their unreal engine just absolutely that's all over there and if you want to read about that one just millions of dollars destroyed a company with a lawsuit but i mean they wholesale stole the engine so yeah they signed a contract there you go do we want okay i know we we talked about obviously got leave lost poorly in this but nate do you want to read your kind of final statement conclusion here with the official ruling of the court and everything you wrote it out so i feel like you kind of got it yeah so i i did an outline for this thing and i'll i'll give you the court summary in summary the court granted paramount's motion to dismiss in its entirety with prejudice and with costs, but without attorney's fees. I mean, the court held that Gottlieb's claims lacked sufficient factual support and in some cases were preempted by federal law. As a result, Paramount emerged as a prevailing party in the case, which is now closed. A big win for the little company called Paramount. Big bad Gottlieb, king of pinball. Hollywood Indian, we're always hoping to see you. alan you want to talk about real quick got leaves you got on the floor right now that's ended on a kind of get into the good good stuff so yeah we got one of these last ones they made we have uh yeah we have Matt Frank thomas big hurt pinball for baseball season we've had it all summer for the season uh super fun game lots of casual players really like that game it's got a big moving glove it's it's actually a hoot like it is it is a fun game it's a better baseball game than silver slugger yeah i agree yeah 100 i don't think anybody would disagree about that one yeah well someone will disagree oh yeah of course and you know send your emails in the comments yeah send your emails to wedgeheadinfo at gmail.com yeah and then the other one we have we have a wedgehead uh volley on the floor single player uh volley volleys of that game great game Ed Krinsky game, the man that designed over 200 machines. Swinging rackets and, you know, bats. They're kind of thematic. Yeah. It's like you planned this around Silver Slugger episode. Yeah. So obviously with the namesake of the bar, we will always have some Gottliebs. I am a Gottlieb boy. I love the Gottliebs. I especially love the Gottlieb EMs, which I think are second to none. They are the best. That's a fact. That's a fact. So a lot of listeners don't know that. They used to be you know king of the mountain and how far they came but this was another episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast i want to thank nate our guest for joining us thanks for having me guys i had so much fun yeah great to have you on and until next time oh we got to do the call to action i almost forgot what's what the call to action is go out and play some pinball oh yeah go out and play some silver slugger if you can do not put it in the background of a movie you're making yeah don't even put it on your instagram you gotta play it in secret if anybody knows where to play got leap high dive i want to play that game that's one of the things i've in in looking through all the notes i had the way too long note i love the art on that game i know we're devolving right now i want to play got leaps high dive or high diver whatever it is if you know where it is let me know i want to play that game all right so for everyone else listening go out and play a got leap if you can't find silver slugger because you know maybe that game's trash and maybe they're not around Play a different Gottlieb, play a good Gottlieb. For everyone else, thanks for listening. Until next time, good luck. Don't suck. There's a run-down bar across the railroad track. I got a table for two, way in the back, where I sit alone and think of losing you. I spend most every night beneath the light of a neon moon Now if you lose your one and only There's always room here for the lonely So watch your broken dreams dance in and out of the beams of a neon moon instinct grits no self-respecting southerner uses instinct grits i take pride in my grits so mr tipton how could it take you five minutes to cook your grits when it takes the entire grit eating world 20 minutes i don't know i'm a fast cook i guess i'm sorry i was all the way over here i couldn't hear you Did you say you're a fast cook? That's it? Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than on any place on the face of the earth? I don't know. Well, perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove. Were these magic grits? I mean, did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans? Oh, objection, Your Honor. Objection sustained. Are you sure about that five minutes? Are you sure about that five minutes? I don't know. I think you made your point. Are you sure about that five minutes? I may have been mistaken. I got no more use for this guy.