> For example, Mayfair Games had a contractual agreement with
> TSR for how to use it's trademark which was precisely to clarify the
> "grey area" of trademark use.
No, Mayfair did not. The events leading up to the lawsuit are a tangled
mess of mutually incompatible stories with virtually no documentation on
either side. All that is clear is that both parties thought they had
certain rights, and both parties had lawyers telling them they would win in
court.
TSR and Mayfair entered into a formal licensing agreement after the original
contested products were released. The agreement itself didn't withstand a
court challenge, though the court made certain dispositions in the final
ruling that indicated that under other circumstances the court would have
found the license to be binding and faulted TSR for it's defense strategy.
> Similarly, given all the confusion people have over the OGF+STL,
> I think that if they really wanted to, WotC could in practice find
> grounds to sue.
Sure, and then you'd have a stark and clear example of the danger of
publishing products without competent legal advice. On the other hand, WotC
is not going to sue anyone making hundreds or even thousands of dollars off
this kind of stuff unless the infringement is intentially egregious, so the
only people at risk are the ones who could have afforded competent legal
representation in the first place.
And five years from now, there will be an established body of knowledge
about how to use the licenses safely, how to separated PI and OGC, how to
"cleary identify" both, etc. You're seeing birth pangs of a whole new class
of intellectual property right - it's going to be bloody, painful, and a
little dangerous.
Ryan
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