<<I don't have Black's Law Dictionary handy, but Merriam-Webster defines
'embody' to mean (among other things) "to cause to become a body or part of
a body; INCORPORATE (syn)". In this case I have to read 'embody' to mean
'those portions which are, if any' and not 'consists entirely of'. I don't
think you can extrapolate your concusions from this language.
>>
I'll have to grab my law dictionary and read that definition again. You may have a point. I'm not sure just yet.
Regarding your interpreation, though, the only type of example of this I could think of to support your construction would be an extremely odd rules formulation. It would involve a company like SONY coming up with a rule calling for a "SONY Roll" where a "SONY Roll" means "roll a d20 and consult a specific chart that SONY devised." In which case your interpretation would declare the "roll a d20 and consult a specific chart" mechanic as automatically OGC (chart & all), but one couldn't call it a "SONY Roll" system and one couldn't reference the phrase "SONY Roll" under the OGL.
Do you have any other examples of usage in light of your intepretation? Or is the general form of PI exclusion for mechanics that you believe the license deals with?
Were your interpretation correct then any new rules added would need to be presented as outside the OGL to provide them any non-OGC status. In your OGC designation you'd have to note that no new rules you've added are covered by the OGL, and that they are alternatively covered by U.S. patent or copyright law (depending on what you've done to protect your rules -- and with the knowledge the copyright protection alone may be insufficient to provide a lot of protection for your rules).
Since your rules would not then be covered by the OGL, but only by U.S. copyright law, you'd need to make sure that the non-OGL covered sections did not verbatim copy from any other source that you didn't have a secondary private license for.
Lee
