But my friends the devil is in the details and in this it works against GW prefered approach of miniature selling that can be boiled down to "when it suits us".
From my understanding (again non legal) copyright laws protect the expresion of an idea in
one medium, not of one idea in
any medium to avoid stiffling of creativity (once I wrote about sparkling vampires, now all glowing vampires are mine). So if GW describes a tervigon but never bothers taking that idea into an sculpture, GW has the rights to that description but not to the sculpture someone might make after reading it. Using the name Tervigon for your figure is another can of worms because thats a trademark and the trademark law works different.
So the comfortable position of staggering releases to suit GW´s has been threatened because somebody was faster creating a egg laying bug (that it´s not a Tervigon) or a cyberwolf (that it´s not a Thunderwolf) kit. In the words of a copyright lawyer.
That is absolutely not the definition of copyright infringement. That might be your personal impression of what is equitable, but it is not copyright protection. There are very good reasons why copyright laws are designed the way that they have been in countries around the world.
§106 · Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
(emphasis mine)
Those are the exclusive rights of a copyright holder. And note too the subject matter of copyright:
§102 (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. (emphasis mine)
Copyright protects original works and only the work. It is called copyright.
An author only has exclusive rights to what is original. Just like a patent claim may contain many elements that are all clearly in the prior art, a work of art likely incorporates many elements that are not original. Copyright gives an author the exclusive rights to reproduce the work, perform or display the work, distribute copies of the work, and to prepare derivative works which are still copied from the root work.
This is apparently what you are missing.
In order to get all the way to copyright infringement, which means that someone other than the owner of a copyright exercised the above-described exclusive rights (keeping in mind a long list of exceptions), you have to follow these steps:
Does the plaintiff own the copyright?
If yes, is the asserted work original?
If yes, what portion of the work is original?
Does the accused work copy that which is original in the asserted work?
The plaintiff in a copyright infringement lawsuit bears the burden of proof with regard to all of these questions. Additionally, the defendant has a wide array of potential affirmative defenses.
Whether or not Chapterhouse makes money because of Games Workshop's game is immaterial with regard to the above questions. Distributing copies of a work is an exclusive right of a copyright holder, but one must show that the works being distributed are copies of a protectible expression. Your opinion is that the Tru-scale products are copies, but the issue is not so open and shut as you believe. Can you show that the Tru scale products are direct recasts of a Games Workshop product, i.e. copies? If not, the issue of whether the works are copies of a protectible expression is not so clear cut at all. The law contemplates that one cannot circumvent infringement by making insubstantial alterations to a protectible expression. But what constitutes insubstantial? You will find that attempting to answer that question wades deeply into the murky realm of subjective interpretation about what "art" is. And the same arguments one would make to prove that an accused work is a copy of a protectible expression in the absence of direct evidence could and should be used to determine the scope of protection inherent in the asserted work itself.
Is it not equitable that the degree of "insubstantial" difference between an asserted work and an accused work apply equally to the asserted work in comparison to any and all preexisting works? If a lemon is a copy of an orange because the two are citrus fruits, then surely the orange is a copy of a preexisting grapefruit on the same basis. Thus the lemon is not a copy of the orange, but a copy of the grapefruit, for the orange is itself a copy of the grapefruit, and under this fanciful example, there are nothing but grapefruits, in spite of what your eyes, nose, and mouth tell you.
When you begin to reach towards arguing that two things that are not exactly the same are indeed exactly the same, it is important to sober your mind with context. Any determination that two works that are not exact copies are the same thing under the law threatens to capture any other work, even those that do not yet exist, with a similar degree of difference. Had you never known what a grapefruit was, or indeed what any other fruit was, a lemon and an orange could indeed seem awfully similar.
What little bit you'd spend on extra custom heads and whatnot is comparative pocket change. GW sics the lawyers on these guys merely on the principle that copyrights have to be actively defended and the best defense is a good offense.