> Ryan S. Dancey
>
> > How can a magazine such as Dragon publish OGC without
> > becoming 'infected' with the OGL?
>
> It will be infected by the OGL. That doesn't mean that
> everything in it has
> to be Open Game Content though.
Doesn't this pretty much limit magazines to either OGC-only or
proprietary-only? Except for Wizards of course...hmmm, in light of the
upcoming 'D20' magazine Alex mentioned, it would seem that Wizards is in an
ideal position to launch a new publication based on OGC. Is that your new
special project Ryan? :-)
> If you write a sourcebook for modern firearms, and you want to refer to
> "Colt" and "Heckler & Koch" firearms, you'll be sued under trademark law,
> not under breach of contract. (Unless, in some weird alternate
> Earth, Colt
> or H&K actually write up stats for their guns and release them as
> Open Game
> Content, and you incorproate that material into your work...)
>
> Colt and/or H&K doesn't have standing to sue for breach; they're not
> copyright holders who are having their copyright infringed by the
> misuse of
> their trademarks.
Out of curiosity, are you aware of any legal action that took place within
TSR in the early eighties over the spy-thriller RPG "Top Secret" (Moore and
Rasmussen were the authors, as I recall) regarding Trademarks? They made
use of modern trademarks extensively, and Colt and H&K specifically. Do you
know if these were used with or without permission?
FASA also makes extensive use of modern trademarks in Shadowrun, do you know
if they asked permission first?
-Brad
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