On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, William Olander wrote:
> Unless you're just making this arguement to make sure people understand the
> proper use of terminology, I think you're flying way off the handle and
> haven't been on the web to look at gaming sites in a long time.
The terminology just happens to be important for the reasons I explained.
> Fair use as I used it here has a number of real world cases.
Fair use as you used it has no meaning legally. And given some of the
arguments that have been made in this thread about being able to just put
D20 on anything and claim "fair use" it's become clear that many people
are confusing copyrights and trademarks. Your message just happened to be
the nth one I read this morning claiming there is a fair use provision
with regard to trademarks.
As I said, you can use other people's trademarks as long as you don't
dilute or infringe. Which is exactly how Pepsi uses Coke -- it's quite
clear that Pepsi isn't claiming to be Coke nor are they claiming anything
else is Coke or that Coke isn't Coke. As far as web sites go, this varies
considerably from what I've seen. The point is any time you use someone
else's trademark you are taking the risk that if they become aware of it
(probably the main reason many web sites never experience any trouble)
they may object. And unlike fair use in copyright law, there is no
explicit clarification of when you can use someone's copyright so you can
easily end up in court.
alec
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
