Right, from the top.
But that is just it, this argument is about companies who intend to profit from material made in the likeness of GW's IP. You also need to be aware that just because you do not indent to profit from it, does not exclude you from IP laws. In most there is also some clause along the lines of ". . . to cause harm to the company image or sales by providing a work/service free of charge."
As far as chapterhouse is concerned, they broke no rules but are definitely causing some grief. Yet, the production of models that have yet to be released by GW is nothing short of a legal dick-move and an attempt to legally "steal" that which they have not finished.
Except that I had to include the no intent to profit disclaimer to my example because if I do attempt to profit from it, then I am breaking IP law. What chapterhouse has been doing does not. That's really the crux of the argument. That they intend to profit from what they are doing does not, in their case, make it an IP breach, whereas in the example I provided it would.
I honestly rather like the background presented in the nid codex (I own it myself), and I don't think it is any better or worse than the DE background. Also taking 10+ years to revise rules for a codex is plain terrible on GWs part.
Edit: BTW the nid second wave is going out next month there are pics all over the web for next white dwarf link.
The background is fine, great even. The rest of it is not worth the paper it is printed on. But that's neither here nor there. Oh, and as for the "second wave", if that's it I'm hardly impressed. They still haven't plugged the biggest gap, and 2 years to produce 3 new models and call it a "wave" is pretty insulting. Of course, we don't yet know that that's all they're doing, but having no evidence that they're releasing any other models... anyway, back to the topic.
But they did produce something. They invented the idea of those units and created rules for them. The background, the rules and the models are all art of the property. They had might well have already done some of the initial design work on the models before the codex was even released, they just ddn't get around to it until now.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of the material in the Warhammer 40,000 universe is, and I use this term generously, "borrowed" from other sources. Strangely enough GW don't seem to mind stealing from Michael Moorcock, Frank Herbert, Dan O'Bannon...
But in any case, that is irrelevant. GW produced a book called the Tyranid Codex, and they have the rights to the intellectual material therein. They do not have the rights to material which they haven't made, but honestly cross-my-heart promise to one day make, maybe. "They might even have already done some of the work" doesn't cut it here either.
Bad analogy. Disney can't sue people for simply making an animated film. They could sue them for making an animated movie that had Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Goofy as characters though. And so they should. And so should GW be able to sue people who use their IP without permission.
You are correct, they can't. What you and the other I address in this post are arguing though, is essentially that they should be able to.
One final note: the argument I am countering here can essentially be boiled down to the suggestion that GW should be able to use intimidation techniques to aggressively maintain a monopoly on things they don't have any rights to. Is this something you guys are fine with? Cause personally if that were reality I would find it extremely disturbing.