From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug
Meerschaert
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2000 10:27 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Open_Gaming] The Spirit and the Letter
<< > Define "derivative". The courts struggle with this question often. I
would
> like to see a way to deal with this without having to have ugly court
> battles.
I'd love to--but that'd be "amatur lawyering." >>
And that's my point exactly. For us to sit back and say, "Well, it's obvious
that's derivative, so it's open" is for 99% of us to be speculating outside
our field AND in an area where the professionals themselves find no easy
answers. The purpose of licenses and contracts are to spell out in advance
the agreements on as many issues as possible, so that there's usually a
clearly right answer. That way, the only things that end up in courts are
the unforeseen issues, and issues where some party deliberately goes against
the agreement. The latter court battles I don't mind: if somebody is clearly
wrong, stick it to him! Make an example out of him, even. But I fear that
too many of the former court battles -- i.e., ones where the rules were
unclear and parties honestly interpreted them differently -- could damage
Open Gaming itself, if people decide the risk is just too high.
And obviously, none of us are going to resolve the license language. That
will be up to the Wizards legal team. But we can help them do a better job
by raising possible issues early, discussing amongst ourselves whether there
even is an issue, and even discussing solutions that make sense to us
laymen. After all, the lawyers' ultimate customers will be laymen, and they
should know how their work is being perceived.
<< How about "all rules should be open, and any content that's not based on
someone else's content can be closed." Best I can do... and something to
slip into the "Spirit" section. >>
I think that's as good as we can get.
<< Yep. And the plot (Bandits meet girl, fall in love with girl, wage war
for
girl's love and the heroes come in to sort it all out) behind that can be
distilled out, applied to different characters and different settings, and
played out all over again. (I believe.) >>
It depends on how different the end result is. If you start with a Star Trek
story and the end result is still recognizably Star Trek with just some
cosmetic name changes, count on hearing from Paramount's lawyers if you
publish it. If the end result is different enough, you'll probably get away
with it legally; but the end result will offend any knowledgeable fan if you
don't add SOMETHING original.
Martin L. Shoemaker
Emerald Software, Inc. -- Custom Software and UML Training
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.EmeraldSoftwareInc.com
www.UMLBootCamp.com
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