It's a criminal complaint. The guy who is suing is claiming Games Workshop violated the RICO Act. (You know, the law that allows the government to seize assets gotten as part of criminal activities. Meant to target the Mafia and racketeering organizations.)
Fraud.
Price fixing.
Tortious Interference.
Breach of contract.
Unjust enrichment.
Restraint of trade.
Conspiracy.
And Anti-trust violations.
Whoo boy. No one likes how GWS does business but I seriously doubt even 1/3rd of that will stick. Unless it turns out GWS has been packing Dreadnought figs with cocaine to ship across the country.
TLDR: Game store owner is pissed because of how GWS limits stock and aggressively protects their own retail outlets by how much product they let them have versus 3rd parties, and at what price.
There's no way this is going through, IMO. Hobby games aren't a core commodity like water, power, internet, food, steel, roads, or any of that shit.
I mean, can you have a monopoly on a product that no one else has the rights to anyways? "Hey Blizzard, your monopoly of WoW and Diablo and Overwatch is wrong and imma sue you over it!"
The game store owner is claimed to be a lawyer as well. Either he's a terrible lawyer, or he thinks he can get a settlement out of GWS. Good luck with that buddy, and I'd keep an eye on the night sky for the jet black lawyer v-wings swooping over your house.....
edit
Lol. He's even going try to argue that they don't own the rights to their IP because so much of the material has been sourced from other things over the years. Everyone knows 40k is derivative as fuck, but this may be the first time someone has tried to argue it in court.
I'm picturing a jury looking at 1st Edition Rogue Trader and Dancing Space Marines and staring around the jury room in utter confusion and bafflement.
edit 2
The plaintiff once worked for FASA. Hah. Hah Hah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
edit 3
He's doing a piss poor job of demonstrating GWS stole any intellectual property. "There was the movie Aliens, and then two years later GWS introduces their own alien breed called Genestealers. They look IDENTICAL TO GEIGER'S ALIENS. And they never paid Ridley Scott for that!!11111" This is clearly an attempt to get a settlement out of GWS.
Oh and WHF:B is ripping off Tolkien. If that's legally true then so is 99% of modern fantasy written in the last 40 years.
This reads like if Trump was a gaming nerd and was trying to sue. "And they've got Elves and Orcs and they don't even look good. SAD! And illegal! Pay me now!"
And now he's mad because GWS made a 50,000% mark up on some of their figs. No one is surprised GWS profits like that, but I highly doubt that any judge would penalize them for that. It's good to hear it publicly said, so gamers can be informed. But making a criminal complaint out of it? For having an amazing supply chain and making all the money they can off of that? Pretty ridiculous.
He's the cherry on top: It's not the $62.5 million dollars in damage he wants. He wants the court to order GWS to forfeit all rights to their copyrights and intellectual property in America, and put it all in to a trust which THE PLAINTIFF would "dutifully" administer.
......This dude has clearly smoked himself retarded on Obscura if he thinks that can or will happen.