On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Doug Meerschaert wrote: > The OGL can only deal with what someone else allready has and doesn't > have. If you don't have authority to do something without the OGL and > the OGL doesn't give it to you, you can't. If you have authority to do > something and the OGL doesn't specifically prohibit it, you can.
While i understand where you're coming from, this isn't correct. The OGL can create rules for those who use it that are not based on pre-existing laws such as copyright or trademark. Those rules of course would only apply to people who are also publishing under the OGL. People publishing outside the OGL get to use *all* material published under the OGL just like they would if it weren't published under the OGL. (i.e. they have to follow normal copyright & trademark laws but they can ignore issues concerning OGC & PI which are concepts created by the OGL.) > Given all that, I *think* that this is what Ryan meant when he made that > infamous remark: > > The name of a thing (spell/feat/skill/class) can be marked Product > Identity. However, the fact that you can call it Product Identity > doesn't mean anything unless there is a method outside of the OGL (i.e., > the law) keeping you from using it anyway. Since copyright doesn't > protect names, you need to claim each name as a trademark (and therefore > expend the expense to defend it, or lose it.) If you *don't* claim your > PI'd name as a trademark, anyone at all has Authority to Contribute it, > regardless of your prior claim. This doesn't make sense just in terms of how PI is defined in the license. If this was correct, PI could simply be defined as trademarks. There'd be no need for mentioning identifying marks or the long list of types of material that may be used as identifying marks. Yes, there is a great deal of overlap between the types of material that can be claimed as an identifying mark and what could possibly be claimed as a trademark, but the license doesn't require anyone to attempt to assert a trademark interest in things they wish to claim as an identifying mark. In fact it explicitly separates identifying marks from trademarks. And anyone publishing under the OGL has to follow the OGL rules concerning PI regardless of whether or not the PI holder has claimed the PI as a trademark. It's probably not a bad way to think about identifying marks (is this something I could claim a trademark on) but it is not a requirement of the license. > That said... I think that it's bad form to claim "all spell names" as > Product Identity. Gross claims like that for PI only further muddy the > waters of the supposed safe harbor that the OGL creates. The OGL isn't > just about getting to use WotC's stuff--it's about share and share > alike, and all publishers *should* do whatever they can to clearly mark > what their fans can use from their work, not just mark what the OGL > forces *them* to use. (more on this in a bit.) This I agree with completely. The broad, general statements attempting to identify either PI or OGC do create problems. I think the most important concept in the entire OGL is *clear identification*. If everyone remembers that the point is to make it clear to the readers what is OGC & what is PI that alone should cut down on the use of the broad & general claims for either OGC or PI. Of course part of the problem is that it's generally clear to the author/publisher - so they automatically understand the vague language. So I'll give the advice I generally give my students, pretend you have to explain the concept to your parents. If you can explain it to them, you've probably done a pretty good job of explaining in enough detail for anyone to understand it rather than relying on internal language and knowledge. alec _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
