Brad Thompson wrote: >Does anyone have standing to sue Hasbro/WotC if they take your SRD-based >derivative work and publish it as their own (perhaps in a d20 issue of >Dragon). Is the fact that the work was authorized enough, or can they step >outside the license because they own everything anyway? > AFAIK, the law won't force you to distribute an unauthorized derivitive work that you never intended to distrubte in the first place. For example, I can write a star trek script to see if I can, and if Paramount cannot break into my house and take it. If they do, or if they simply steal it when I send it in for review, I can sue them.
I think the OGL would be much the same relationship. Everyone who isn't WotC is making open game content that, by WotC's own logic, increases the value of WotC's roleplaying game. I believe that this is in many ways analogous to a freelance employment contract--we as OGC producers "pay" by releasing OGC and following the OGL, and the authorization is what we get in return. Then again, I'm not a lawyer. But if The Craft of the Mind showed up one day in DRAGON with no OGL and no contact from me, I'd go find a lawyer to talk to real quick. :) I wager everyone else here would do much the same thing. >Is this the part that makes IP lawyers nervous about copyleft-type licenses? > Sounds like it. Another part is probably just the fact that copyleft is so new--it hasn't been directly tested by a court, and so it's as open a legal question as "does a martian have rights?" DM _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
