Hello, all. Time for a new topic: how does one adequately correct an OGL
infraction?
In a vanity search for my OGL game, Tilez, I discovered that "Tilez" is a
registered trademark. That alone is enough to put me in violation of the
OGL: using a registered trademark without explicit permission of the
trademark owner. And just to make the violation complete, the trademark is
for a board game in the same basic subgenre s my game: covering squares on a
board with tiles. The chance of commercial confusion is incredibly high; so
not only am I in violation of the OGL, but I am extremely likely to be in
violation of trademark law. I am most certainly in violation of my own moral
code, which requires me to respect other people's IP as I would want my own
to be respected.
So as soon as I can work out a kink with my ISP, Unpronounceable Squiggle
(the Game Formerly Known as Tilez) will be removed from my web site until I
can remove all references to the disallowed trademark.
But is that enough?
Given that Unpronounceable Squiggle has received exactly zero reviews in the
OG Registry since it was posted six months ago, I highly doubt that I have
any real concern here; but suppose by some odd chance someone has derived
other games from Unpronounceable Squiggle. Assuming they followed the OGL
requirements, my trademark infringement will be perpetuated in their
copyright statements.
My case here is extreme: the violation is in the title itself. But a similar
sort of situation could happen if any OGC contained a trademark violation
and was then copied by others. So the question becomes: how does one
adequately repair such an infraction? I cannot possibly know what use has
been made of my work. So should I put a notice on my web site informing
visitors of the name change? In theory, some derivative game may some day be
discovered to contain my violation; and the creator of that game will
rightly turn to me for redress, since it's my violation originally. So I
want to preemptively announce the correction, just to try to resolve most
problems with least effort.
Let this also serve as an object lesson: a simple OGL game, entirely open
content, derived from absolutely nothing, intended to make not a dime... and
I STILL maybe should have had a lawyer advise me.
Martin L. Shoemaker
Martin L. Shoemaker Consulting, Software Design and UML Training
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.MartinLShoemaker.com
http://www.UMLBootCamp.com
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