Since the license already defines other terms, it would certainly be useful to have "owenership" defined for purpses of the OGL in a later version. One of my biggest problems with the license as a whole is that while it avoids unnecessary legalease and is largely human-readable (yay!), it leaves a lot of open questions (and hence this list, apparently). A good first step for a newer version would be tightening up the ambiguous definitions.
Unfortunately, this is just me being policy-minded, and doesn't do much for people who are subject to older licenses. However, giving more concrete definitions, and adding those that are apparently needed would at least help to clear up the grey area where the OGL and the murky waters of IP intersect. I don't know why I'm suggesting this. I mean, people like me (lawyers) pretty much make our money off of interpreting the grey areas. I must be a traitor to the profession. :) Matt -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Spike Y Jones Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 4:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Ogf-l] PI declarations On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:30:43 -0500 "Matthew Hector" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > As far as the IP laws themselves are concerned, it would seem a lot > of them are superseded by the OGL. Yes, indeed. The OGL is a license that allows you to make use of some copyrighted material that you might not otherwise have access to, in exchange for giving up some of the other IP rights you might overwise have. In some situations, other IP laws can be a part of OGL discussions (such as the whole question of what constitutes "ownership" for the purposes of being able to make a valid Product Identity claim) but at other times they can only provide analogies and parallels because users of the OGL agree not to play by all the IP laws that pertain to the outside world. One of the tricky things is knowing when one stops and the other starts. Spike Y Jones _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
