Mark Rein apologizes for Epic's lawyers attacking artist

While Mark Rein was away, the lawyers did play. During last week's GDC a cease and desist order was sent to Emilio Lopez over a very well done one-time piece of Gears of War art. Lopez had created the Munny doll for his cousin. The lawyers requested all Gears of War trademarks be removed -- even though the assets used to create the doll were taken from a fansite pack Epic released. Epic's VP Mark Rein apparently got back to the office after hearing about this and typed out a statement of apology and clarification.

Rein says on the Epic website, "Ugh. Our lawyers are trying to do their job and protect our trademarks but I guess they didn't realize this wasn't a commercial project and they fired off a standard form letter ... What we need to do is come up with some sort of permission letter for things like these so that we're properly protecting our future commercial rights but not stopping people from doing cool fan art like this. On behalf of Epic I apologize to Emilio and anyone who was offended by this."

[Thanks Frost]