> Doug Meerschaert
>
> After someone pointed out that the standing of writers of an
> "open" copyright
> would have to sue is in question, I wondered if there was a way
> to work around
> that...
>
> What if, either as a condition of the OGL or as a sepearte
> agreement, whole or
> partial copyright to an open work was given to the OGF in exchange for a
> membership in the OGF with a contractual right to press a suit on
> the OGF's
> behalf in regards to the work.
>
> In other words, the OGF "holds" a copyright, and by that
> copyright grants the
> right to the original authors to sue on the OGF's behalf for
> violations of the
> OGF.
There is no 'Right to Sue', there are only Rights. If you think your Rights
are infringed, you may petition the courts to decide if they in fact have
been infringed. The courts then decide how to you could be compensated for
your infringement.
If a contract assigns a Right (such as a copyright) to another party, the
assigning party does not normally retain a right to seek legal adjudication
on that right from third parties - that travels with the assigned Right to
assignee.
In this case, the OGF would have to press the suit, and any reparations
would be given to the OGF. The OGF could then disseminate any proceeds as
it saw fit. However, in order for the OGF to act in this capacity it would
need to be much more than an paper organization. It would need real live
people to carry out these actions. They wouldn't need to be full-time
employees, but the officers would be taking on a fair bit of a workload just
to manage all the paperwork it would create (anyone who's ever set up a
corporation knows just what kind of paperwork I'm talking about.
Non-profits are different, but they still have paperwork).
-Brad
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For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
