> Faustus von Goethe
>
> Uh, Brad. Follow the thread please. I was not talking about the
> trademark
> "SRD", I was talking about the trademark "WotC". You said I
> couldn't use it
> because the OGL forbids it.
I am following it, and the OGL forbids the use you described. I just didn't
say it as well as I could have.
On Wednesday, November 08, 2000 8:39 PM you said:
> "All open material in this book is directly taken from open
> content provided by WotC in the D20 SRD. There is no original
> open content in this volume. Please consult the D20 SRD to
> reference open content from this publication?"
>
> Failing that (since referencing the D20 SRD directly would probably be a
> trademark violation), would it be sufficient to copy the D20 SRD verbatim
> and reference that document as the open content? Such as:
>
> "All of the open content in this work is identified clearly in
> appendix 'Q' and was provided by WotC. Please reference
> appendix 'Q' to identify the open content in this work."
>
> I do not think referencing WotC is improper in this context as it is
> identifying the source of the open content - sonething that is
> required by
> the license. Ryan? Anyone?
This indicates that you wished to use the trademark 'WotC' or rather
'Wizards of the Coast' (because 'WotC' is a slang abbreviation that won't
appear in the SRD) in your section (8) Identification of Open Content. You
also referred to using the term 'D20 SRD' and suspected it would be a
trademark violation. I concur, it would be a violation, but since the name
is changing it won't be an issue (you won't get the chance to refer to that
document). The mark 'Wizards of the Coast' is a second, separate mark,
which will remain a part of the soon-to-be-renamed D20 SRD in the copyright
section.
> Now I'm tryng to figure out why you said that & if I am missing
> something,
> since nowhere I can see in the OGL does it say I cannot use a
> WotC trademark
> to refer to the document from which the open content in my
> document came.
> In fact, it says I MUST reference that document.
>
> What am I missing?
The OGL says you must copy the COPYRIGHT section verbatim into your
copyright section. No modifications and no other uses are allowed. Using
the mark as you suggested in your Identification of OGC is clearly a
different use than granted under section 6, and so we must look to section
(7) to see if this is permissible.
>From the OGL, section 7:
"You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any
Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as
expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such
Trademark."
The phrase 'compatibility or co-adaptability' has a broad range of meaning.
It can easily be argued that by making reference to Wizards of the Coast in
your document as part of your Identification you are indicating that a
Wizards of the Coast product is compatible with yours by virtue of your
derivation from their document. This is expressly forbidden by section (7),
and so would be a violation. You have the right to use the material, but
you can't use their trademark to identify that material in your document -
you can only use it to give credit to your sources.
Instead, you should simply say
"All of the open content in this work is identified clearly in
appendix 'Q'. Please reference appendix 'Q' to identify the
open content in this work."
However, I personally think this falls below the bar of 'Clearly
Identifying' the OGC within your work. Material which is derived from OGC
must also be OGC, so in order for this to stick you would have to use the
SRD without deriving from it, a very difficult task for a non-trivial
product. However, my opinion of what counts as 'clearly identifying' is
pretty meaningless.
-Brad
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