On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:25:08 EDT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Read my most recent post on the 3 ways you can claim some copyright > over a name.
Your follow-up post arrived just after I sent mine out; oh well. > You CAN PI a name as it applies to a very specific character, but > then your PI protections extend only to the application of that > name to that character. At that point, the name is no longer > considered to be per se public domain. Which serves to muddy the water up considerably. Daniel at Highmoon was presented with a problem: He has a book about Celtic stuff and he uses as one of his OGC sources a Mongoose book that is also derived from Celtic sources. Mongoose PI's a bunch of terms in connection with its book, many of which Daniel can source from the public domain. But since those terms as Mongoose uses them are applied to the ways Mongoose used them in its book, then the PI declaration is valid in relation to the way that Mongoose has characterized the terms. So we now run into the problem that Daniel *can* use those terms if he does so in a non-Mongoose manner; that is, if he uses them in such a way that his use is obviously taken from the public domain sources and obviously not taken from the Mongoose source. But since Mongoose itself derived those elements in part from the public domain sources, how is one to determine whether or not Daniel's interpretation of, say, Firbolgs is safely public domain or breachedly Mongoose-derived? Without a brightline test, simply waiting to see if Mongooose decides to send out a cease & desist order seems inefficient (especially since a C&D letter doesn't settle the matter; it merely forces Daniel to sit down and ask himself the question again to determine whether he can ignore the letter or whether he has to do something). I still say the easiest course is likely to be to get in touch with Mongoose and see what can be worked out. Spike Y Jones _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
