My point is that their FAQ is written for third-party publishers and
clearly not themselves. Again, not being a lawyer, I can still assume that
there are legal workarounds that don't apply to WotC as the originators of
the license.>>
There is NO exclusion in the license that allows WotC to be treated differently from any other publisher during the times when they use the OGL except that they don't need to use the license to license stuff from themselves. Read the license for yourself. There's nothing there. And there's nothing at law that says the drafter of a license can ignore it's provisions. If anything, because this is a contract of adhesion, anywhere there is ambiguity, if WotC bring a case to court, the ambiguity is construed AGAINST the drafter, not in favor of the drafter, giving WotC nominally less protection at law and less wiggle room than a typical OGL user.
The WotC FAQ makes the odd assumption, de facto, that if I have 3 products and I bundle them together in shrink wrap (let's say I am giving a bundled discount) that suddenly the shrinkwrap makes them one work and then the OGL extends to all of them if it extends to one of them. That's preposterous. There's only one part of the OGL that would apply to such a bundle. It says you may not make compatibility declarations "in conjunction with" an OGL-covered work. Instead the answer below wrongly says that the coverage comes from the fact that the OGL suddenly covers all products bundled together, even if they have separate and distinct copyrights, trying to rely on some construction of "covered work" which is fairly nonsensical. It's not the legal definition of "work" that needs to be construed so much as the legal definition of "in conjunction with".
Now, a boxed set that is designed from start to finish as a single commercial unit may count as a work, but works may contain other works, and the OGL may be applied to any sub-work in the box instead of applying it to the containing work. Doing so would not mean that the containing work was OGL covered (beyond the "in conjunction with"clause).
> Q: I want to make a product that claims compatibility with someone
> else's Trademark, and uses Open Game Content. I'm going to put the
> Open Game Content in a separate booklet in a box, and only use the
> Trademark on the packaging on the box. Can I get away with this?
>
> A: No. The terms of the Open Game License extend to the whole work. If
> you have questions about the technical legal definition of a "work",
> consult your legal counsel.
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