> Kal Lin
>
> Consider if someone created a product with the monster Aboleth as
> product identity and added new different stats which are open content
> then that product would be in breach of the OGL by marking a piece
> of OGC (assuming the SRD releases Aboleth) as PI. Of course, one
> can email and suggest they fix it. But in the end I believe I
> can use Aboleth with the new stats. I would cite the SRD for
> Aboleth and the new work for the new OGC stats. If I read clause
> 13 correctly, failure to correct the breach does not terminate my
> sublicense to the new OGC stats. Nor does pulling the offending
> product from the shelves terminate my perpetual license to the new
> OGC stats.
I agree with most of this in principle, but you left out the most important
consequence of the offender's license being terminated. While the act of
pulling the product from the shelf does not automatically invalidate your
license, you will run into another problem as soon as the author of the
yanked work finds out about you. The authority to contribute. Just because
the OGL in his product was invalid does not mean that his copyright was
invalid. The only thing that allowed you to use his OGC in the first place
was the OGL, so without it you have no right to their work. They don't
really have the right to use it either, since it was probably a derivative
work, but that is beside the point - they can still stop others from using
it. That author would have the right to challenge your authority to
contribute the OGC you took from their work, and you would be in breach.
> Of course, if you write those 20 public domain names down and agree to
> not use it then it is a valid contract. But the OGL is not the same.
I agree that a naked name is not enough, I was simply making the simplest
case for the sake of an example. I think a name representing an OGC
creature is sufficient. The name is not an enhancement over prior art, but
the OGC it describes is, so the combination works. The only part of the
public domain name that is protected is when it refers to the OGC it was
bundled with, or some derivation of it. It's that derivation part that I
think will cause the most grief - as I mentioned to Alec, I think it would
be very hard to show that your OGC creature was not derived from the PI
version's OGC, except in the most obvious of examples (if your Aboleth is a
fish and mine is a dragon and yours uses goo for mind control and mine uses
breath, and none of the stats are the same and none of the powers are the
same, for example).
> I'm saying it is better to use the OGC as it is supposed to be used.
Agreed. The OGL is poorly equipped to handle this situation. Certainly
having a lot of those things as PI makes it hard to refine and evolve the
OGC behind the creature, which is one of the stated goals of OGC. I am all
for having less PI for common things like monsters, and saving it for the
truly original works, but if somebody does do something like this I am much
more inclined to boycott their products than I am to try to simply treat the
content as if it had been released as OGC.
-Brad
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