On Thu, 11 May 2000, Kal Lin wrote:
> You are free to create/promote/market/enforce your own
> trademarked logo and to create products under that trademark
> which demonstrate your convictions.
No, he is not, reminding you that those convictions are
"use the D&D name to promote my product by ensuring
compatibility" (i.e. "100% D&D compatible!").
>From the D20STL:
"3.3.3. You may not use the Dungeons & Dragons(R) or Wizards of
the Coast(R) trademarks in advertising or in any material
separate from the Publication, or in any other way other than
that described in Section 3.3.1 and 3.3.2."
Assuming that he would like to _also_ use the D20 logo,
this prevents it outright. And of course that assumption is
valid: if a game is "100% D&D compatible!" then it is naturally
D20 compliant, and bragging rights on that score aren't
antithetical to anything, considering their own logo they created
to express _that_.
>From the OGL:
"11. Use of Contributor Credits:
You may not market or advertise the Open Game Content using the
name of any Contributor unless You have written permission
from the Contributor to do so."
Since the about is outright impossible, we'll assume that
he'll just put it under the OGL alone. Point 11 above tells us
that you cannot advertise the product using the names of
contributor without permission. In this case, the contributor is
Wizards of the Coast, whose name you'll have to drop if you want
to use the (protected) trademark "D&D." And they _aren't_ going
to give permission because they don't want to police everyone
else's work to make sure it's _true_.
So if your strong objections are based upon the idea that
what he's asking for is possible but that asking WotC to do it
for him is too much to ask, then I suspect you need to check your
premises.
> Expecting WotC to provide you a trademarked shortcut to
> respectability as "D&D compatible" is not only selfish but
> antithetical to open gaming. We don't need any more
> licenses/trademarks/restrictions for everyone with some
> agenda.
Yeah, one license/trademark/restriction from someone with
an agenda is enough! ;-> Selfishness is debatable. No, the
real reason why they probable shouldn't/won't create one is this:
because then they'd have to deal with making sure the products
actually matched that description. This way, their asses are
covered because they weren't promising as much to begin with.
Later,
Ron
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