Okay, I've been wanting to say some stuff for a while now. So here I go:
I worked on Edge with David myself as a sound design and composer, so I know him personally. I chose to trust David, and to me it's clear that Langdell is full of shit. I'm of course speaking entirely for myself, not on behalf of Mobigame or David Papazian, since I'm not part of Mobigame.
Langdell bullied Mobigame, threatening them of lawsuits that would cost "millions of dollars", and also threatened David PERSONALLY.
I think I'm correct if I say that Langdell's first contact with Mobigame was asking for money directly.
More hilariously, his original claim was that Edge the iPhone game was a clone of The Edge's C64 oldie Bobby Bearing
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/31/bobby.htm, and that Mobigame plagiarized Bobby Bearing and nammed the result "Edge" on purpose, in order to mislead consumers into thinking something like
"oh hey that's that old C64 game Edge or The Edge or something with cubes and shit". Thus, Mobigame would make profit on the back of The Edge's "famous trademark".
I think that making the story public was a smart move from Mobigame, and it came after weeks of trying to solve this quietly and peacefully. But the man just wasn't letting go, and went out of his way to scare the shit out of them with threats of "millions of dollars" to pay in imminent lawsuits etc. That is why Mobigame decided to pull their game off the US and UK stores, taking some time to think about the issue and potential solutions, the stakes of changing the name of a game that already won several awards, the risks of deciding not to take any shit from Langdell when you're an independent developer made of just two people without a large bank account, and overall the really bad taste in your mouth if you let this guy win without fighting.
When Langdell wasn't satisfied with that withdrawal he asked that the game be removed from ALL stores, claiming ownership of the trademark EDGE in every countries. Mobigame, having registered that trademark in at least France and a few other countries, demanded proof. Langdell failed (or refused) to produce such proof or any documents regarding his supposedly registered trademark in Europe. Nor could he produce any legal proof of Future Publishing or the magazine EDGE having licensed his trademark. I find this highly suspicious as I heard a while ago that back in around 1993 the creators of the magazine had legal issues with someone trying to extort money from them because of some frivolous copyright infrigment claim, and them paying to avoid trouble. I suspect it could be Langdell at work, as early as this. If anyone has more information about this I would be eager to know what really happened, and if Tim Langdell of Edge Games were involved in any way (wouldn't that be awesome?)
I think this is what David meant by "the flamewar started in 93".
As someone who witnessed the creative genius around David and Matthieu's desks first hand, and how hard they work for over a fucking year to make this game as finetuned and award worthy, I have to say I'm disgusted at Langdell's intentions. Oh, and as someone who's worked on the game, I don't feel any better either.
I think the people's reaction on TIGsource and Kotaku and other websites and forum was excellent, often hilariously smart. Mobigame didn't start a flamewar. They just told their story, then people did research on Langdell on their own and digged up all the weird shit he laid over the years. Langdell brought this shit storm of bad publicity on himself. That's at least one credit we'll give him.
To me, Tim Langdell is nothing short of an extorsionist.
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