On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Lizard wrote:
> At 04:47 PM 1/11/2002, John Kim wrote:
> > Er, but I am *licensed* to use the specific creatures which are
> > squid-headed monsters with four tentacles around their mouth that
> > suck out brains. They live underground and are lawful evil, and
> > often work with Grimlocks, and speak Undercommon (although they
> > prefer to communicate telepathically), etc.
> > [...] The only issue is what name I give to them.
>
> Yes. You can use Mind flayers. You can also probably use the name
> "Illithid" in conjunction with something which is NOT a Mind Flayer,
> though doing so would just confuse people for no reason...
>
> But you can't (well, shouldn't) use the word "Illithid" as a synonym
> for"Mind Flayer".
Well, I was talking about legalities -- not neccessarily
what should or shouldn't be done. If WotC really wants to reserve
the word "illithid" for only their use, I am happy to humor them.
It seems like a minor point.
However, I don't see the legal obstacle to doing so. Since
"illithid" is not a trademark and is not declared as Product Identity,
it doesn't violate the OGL to use that word. Words by themselves are
not copyrightable -- even distinctive, made-up words. Characters
are copyrightable, but I don't see how character copyright is an
issue, since I have the right to use the character itself.
Is there any precedent for this?? It seems to me that the
reverse is true. i.e. In the case of Warner Bros. Pictures v.
Columbia Broadcasting Sys., it was found that one could use the
character and even name it "Sam Spade" -- since the character was
not distinctive enough. In contrast to this, the case of McDonalds
swiping H.R. PuffNStuff was ruled against them -- because the characters
were distinctive even though they changed the names.
- John
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