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<blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 4695134" data-attributes="member: 59506"><p>Not necessarily. A court of law might agree with that at the <em>conclusion</em> of a lawsuit, but not necessarily before. In which case you'd have to spend a lot of money defending yourself, not to mention the PR hit your company and brand may take.</p><p> </p><p>Yes, you'd have to prove they are the responsible party, but, they may be able to force proceedings to attempt to prove just that. It may be possible to force a lawsuit on the premise that WoTC licenses (in this case the OGL and STL) gives tacit permission for such a product, and therefore WoTC is liable. A lawsuit like that would probably never win, but the money spent defending themself, and the PR damage, could be considerable. That could even be just the crack in the armor that anti-D&D activists could use to bring the subject back into the limelight. For a real world example (not as a commentary on politics), lawsuits just like this have been brought against the gun industry. To date, I don't think any of the suits have won, but they've spent considerable amounts of money figthing this and lobbying for support.</p><p> </p><p>But that's only about possible liability issues. Something doesn't have to be legally valid for your brand to take a Public Relations hit. Just look at the hits WoTC takes here on ENWorld for some seemingly inocuous actions (and some not so inocuous actions<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />). Could you imagine what the damage to the D&D brand would be if anti-D&D groups started publicly declaring that D&D promotes pornography and lasciviousness, and used BoEF as exhibit number one? Whether right or wrong, to most parents it would appear to be a smoking gun, which is all that would matter to them. Game over. So, they protect themselves with a clause in their license before it becomes a problem. Sounds like a very smart decision to me.</p><p> </p><p>As far as the porno example, one could make the argument that it's parody, and therefore protected by the first amendment (no matter how distasteful it may be to some people - even bad parody is still parody). Something of which the Trek franchise or Gene Rodenberry's estate would probably have had no ability to control even if they did seek legal action.</p><p> </p><p>(edit: Sorry Umbran. I was probably typing yet when your post went up. It takes me a while to make sure I've spelled everything right - which even then I usually don't have everything spelled right.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="El Mahdi, post: 4695134, member: 59506"] Not necessarily. A court of law might agree with that at the [I]conclusion[/I] of a lawsuit, but not necessarily before. In which case you'd have to spend a lot of money defending yourself, not to mention the PR hit your company and brand may take. Yes, you'd have to prove they are the responsible party, but, they may be able to force proceedings to attempt to prove just that. It may be possible to force a lawsuit on the premise that WoTC licenses (in this case the OGL and STL) gives tacit permission for such a product, and therefore WoTC is liable. A lawsuit like that would probably never win, but the money spent defending themself, and the PR damage, could be considerable. That could even be just the crack in the armor that anti-D&D activists could use to bring the subject back into the limelight. For a real world example (not as a commentary on politics), lawsuits just like this have been brought against the gun industry. To date, I don't think any of the suits have won, but they've spent considerable amounts of money figthing this and lobbying for support. But that's only about possible liability issues. Something doesn't have to be legally valid for your brand to take a Public Relations hit. Just look at the hits WoTC takes here on ENWorld for some seemingly inocuous actions (and some not so inocuous actions;)). Could you imagine what the damage to the D&D brand would be if anti-D&D groups started publicly declaring that D&D promotes pornography and lasciviousness, and used BoEF as exhibit number one? Whether right or wrong, to most parents it would appear to be a smoking gun, which is all that would matter to them. Game over. So, they protect themselves with a clause in their license before it becomes a problem. Sounds like a very smart decision to me. As far as the porno example, one could make the argument that it's parody, and therefore protected by the first amendment (no matter how distasteful it may be to some people - even bad parody is still parody). Something of which the Trek franchise or Gene Rodenberry's estate would probably have had no ability to control even if they did seek legal action. (edit: Sorry Umbran. I was probably typing yet when your post went up. It takes me a while to make sure I've spelled everything right - which even then I usually don't have everything spelled right.) [/QUOTE]
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