> Well, you'd be violating the OGL agreement. I'll admit to being a little
> unclear as to who would actually be enforcing that agreement: WotC, OGF,
> or any other OGL author.
This is the crux of my point. I can't execute an agreement with Wizards of
the Coast (who generally owns the copyright of the OGL contracts on behalf
of another entity, so it should more relevantly state that Wizards'
trademarks may not be used without permission, which is the core purpose of
this inclusion.
As for the enforceability with other trademark holders, that remains in the
purview of the individual licensing agreements with the trademark holders.
Unless this contract is between the OGL author and ALL game companies... but
it's not... it's between the OGL author and WotC (insert shell company name
here).
If you include it as a guideline, then it's a guideline. It just seems like
a bit of legal misdirection that would cause more problems than it would
help imho.
> More important is that you'll have provided the
> holder of the trademark you are using a strong piece to use to stop your
> use of their trademark. So FUDGE (btw, is there actually a FUDGE
> trademark?) could use the OGL language as part of their attempt to prevent
> the use the FUDGE trademark. If the company who's trademark you are using
> doesn't care, I think it's likely that no one in the OGL is likely to do
> anything. But as mentioned above, the two most likely trademarks that
> people would attempt to use without permission are likely to be D20 & D&D
> - WotC has made it fairly clear that they aren't going to grant permission
> for the use of either of these trademarks.
Then make it clear that it's WotC's trademarks in the contract. I can see a
reason to diffuse the issue here to include all other game trademarks in
this contract so that the OGL doesn't specifically protect WotC, thereby
insulating the OGL effort from being tagged as a WotC owned, oh by the way
it's kind-of open, project, but that's really what this is... it's a WotC
licensing agreement between me and WotC... not anyone else.
Jared
>
> alec
>
> -------------
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