<< Does this matter? "Gray Waste of Hades", if not trademarked, cannot be copyrighted by itself. So, if somebody takes the phrase and writes a story with the phrase then they can't be guilty of copyright infringement on 4 words. >>
The four words "Gray Waste of Hades" may not be protectable on their own, but what can give protection is the copyright of the work that TSR/WotC published the "Gray Waste of Hades". The fact that the four words used together don't exist anywhere outside a WotC copyrighted work only goes to show that it's a stretch to think that the use in your one paragraph story is not derivitive of WotC's copyrighted work. What I'm talking about is called "Character Copyright". If you check the mailing list archives, you can read up on some of the discussions. I have two messages from Ryan, that describes character copyright: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 - RE: [Ogf-d20-l] Converting from OGC to non-SRD systems.. Sun, 4 Nov 2001 - RE: [Ogf-l] multiple licenses << Nope. WotC cannot claim copyright on something that short. Only potentially a trademark. If it's not trademarked, then it's free for anyone to use outside of the OGL. >> I never said that WotC could claim a copyright on 4 words, but they could claim a copyright on their expression of the "Gray Wastes of Hades". << My friend could write a paragraph on New Jersey and describe it as "The Grey Wastes of Hades". If that's not trademarked, then no protection, and bingo, it's in another source. >> While I do agree and acknowledge that your New Jersery paragraph described as the "Gray Wastes of Hades" could be safe from the perspective of not being a derivitive work of WotC's planescape materials. What the courts will look at is the intent. It just seems far reaching that someone would use a source completly unrelated to the phrase in question, which was also created just for the sole purpose of using that phrase (unless of course you were making a modern campaign setting where the city of New Jersey was literally the Gray Wastes of Hades). Since I don't have the time on inclination to debate this indepth, and only wanted to provide my opinion on the topic, I choose to return to lurk mode. It just seems like it's getting rediculous. -- Scott Fantages Studios: http://www.fantages-studios.com Publisher of Wrestle, the Fantages Game System and The Rya'mier Campaign Setting _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
