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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4307504" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I teach in a law school (in Australia, not the US) but not in IP. Nevertheless, I'll give you some thoughts.</p><p></p><p>In the second quoted paragraph you don't take your thought quite far enough: as Robertsconley pointed out above, the issue would as much be the extent to which that text breached copyright as opposed to simply wrongly used WoTC's trademarks.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, I don't know that it's true that the 4e rules can't be patented although, as far as I know, they have not been.</p><p></p><p>But in any event, it seems possible that one might design an application that could run a 4e game (though even then the code might potentially be derivative of WoTC's copyrighted text - I don't know enough about either coding or the US law of derivative works) but be extremely constrained in the permissible textual output that it might give: character sheets, power descriptions, monster statblocks etc would all at least potentially be in breach of WoTC's copyright.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 4307504, member: 42582"] I teach in a law school (in Australia, not the US) but not in IP. Nevertheless, I'll give you some thoughts. In the second quoted paragraph you don't take your thought quite far enough: as Robertsconley pointed out above, the issue would as much be the extent to which that text breached copyright as opposed to simply wrongly used WoTC's trademarks. Furthermore, I don't know that it's true that the 4e rules can't be patented although, as far as I know, they have not been. But in any event, it seems possible that one might design an application that could run a 4e game (though even then the code might potentially be derivative of WoTC's copyrighted text - I don't know enough about either coding or the US law of derivative works) but be extremely constrained in the permissible textual output that it might give: character sheets, power descriptions, monster statblocks etc would all at least potentially be in breach of WoTC's copyright. [/QUOTE]
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