<<It seems reasonable that the PI designation goes hand in hand with the
"ownership of the text in aggregate" allow you to designate certain portions
of the text that others may Use (1g of the OGL; Use = copy, modify, format,
translate, or derive from) - that's the OGC - and other portions of said
text - even small portions that in and of themselves would not stand up as
copyrightable material as stuff others may NOT Use (copy, modify, format,
translate, or derive from) - either as "not OGC" or as "PI."
>>
Not an outrageous reading of the OGL at all. However, that reading, as I've noted, is in many instances (though not all) the same as saying "The items marked as PI are unlicensed" (as opposed to them items marked as PI have lots of extra protections).
<<
It also seems to me that if the name can possibly be sourced elsewhere, the
PI designation is useless... >>
I still wonder if all untrademarked names can't be sourced in from elsewhere. If a name can't be copyrighted in isolation, and you license me 99.9% of your spell except the name, then one wonders if I can just ignore your PI designation since you can't own the name in isolation, and you've already licensed me everything else.
If you can't PI the name and protect it (almost any name) then it seems like you can PI names from folklore too and protect them. Neither one seems to have much, if any copyrightable material in them.
Collections of names do. And certainly names in concert with textual descriptions do too. However, I'm not certain whether a tiny shred of copyright protection is left in the aggregation in spite of the fact that 99.9% of the text has been licensed, or if licensing the entire spell except for 3 words nukes your copyright claim in the 3 words.
<<
In other words, PI protection under the terms of the OGL seems to be no
stronger than standard copyright protection... if I can duplicate your
"research" of public domain sources, I can duplicate your results. You get
the idea (I hope).>>
One possible reading. Can't be discounted. However, since names are not normally copyrightable, people who OGC the spells and PI the spell names may be out of luck. In those cases a court might treat the names like a recipe book -- only the collection (of names) is copyrightable -- the individual names aren't, allowing you to fill in any name you want from anywhere if it isn't trademarked, and if you do not do this with a huge collection of names.
Lee
