Question for Scott Rouse re: Retroclones

[S'mon]

WoTC legal are well aware of OSRIC; Stuart Marshall the author has been in conversation with them about it back in 2006. They didn't threaten to sue him. Nor did they give him authorisation.

FWIW, I teach copyright and contract law, I have looked at OSRIC, and it seems very tightly designed so as not to infringe copyright or breach the OGL. Other retroclones may have minor, technical or trivial copyright infringements of non-OGL material (which BTW would not necessarily lead a judge to award damages or injunction, at least in UK law), but OSRIC looks watertight to me. I don't think Orcus can have looked at it carefully in terms of the OGL and copyright when he made his statement.

My impression is that the author of OSRIC is a serious person, WoTC would be ill advised to bring a lawsuit against him that would probably fail (note he's in the UK and our law is not as plaintiff friendly as US law) and set an unwelcome precedent for him. And WoTC/Hasbro legal are not idiots like the TSR in-house lawyers, they know this too. Where they have taken action, it has been for file-sharing or for trademark infringement, both of which are much simpler to litigate than OGL/copyright. The OGL was specifically designed to prevent WoTC lawyers suing people, IMO no smart lawyer is going to want to go in for an OGL lawsuit except where there has been trade mark use by the OGL licensee.

 

[xechnao]

Also, It's not part of Scott's job description to hang around Enworld answering questions. I believe he does so in his free time. The quote and its link is my source...

It is part of his job. Interacting with the public on behalf of the image of his company. Same way as it was part of the developers' and designers' job to offer podcasts and blogs for marketing reasons. As for the free time argument? This is nonsense. Scott is not a manual labourer.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I pity the company which believes its customers do not deserve answers to their questions, no matter how (il)legitimate these end up being. This, I believe, certainly would constitute corporate arrogance at its finest. This is not a stab at WotC's decision to answer or not joe's question. It is, however, a stab at the biased logic behind your argument, Morrus.

Come on. It really depends on the question. This is a question with serious legal implication that no sane businessman would answer on a messageboard. And additionally this thread has serious shades of being a "hey blue!1!!" post at the WoW forums.
Also, Joe, for you not caring about Wotc and their success you sure post a lot of threads about them lately.

 

[Mark]

WoTC legal are well aware of OSRIC; Stuart Marshall the author has been in conversation with them about it back in 2006. They didn't threaten to sue him. Nor did they give him authorisation.

FWIW, I teach copyright and contract law, I have looked at OSRIC, and it seems very tightly designed so as not to infringe copyright or breach the OGL. Other retroclones may have minor, technical or trivial copyright infringements of non-OGL material (which BTW would not necessarily lead a judge to award damages or injunction, at least in UK law), but OSRIC looks watertight to me. I don't think Orcus can have looked at it carefully in terms of the OGL and copyright when he made his statement.

My impression is that the author of OSRIC is a serious person, WoTC would be ill advised to bring a lawsuit against him that would probably fail (note he's in the UK and our law is not as plaintiff friendly as US law) and set an unwelcome precedent for him. And WoTC/Hasbro legal are not idiots like the TSR in-house lawyers, they know this too. Where they have taken action, it has been for file-sharing or for trademark infringement, both of which are much simpler to litigate than OGL/copyright. The OGL was specifically designed to prevent WoTC lawyers suing people, IMO no smart lawyer is going to want to go in for an OGL lawsuit except where there has been trade mark use by the OGL licensee.

If someone under the OGL violates a copyright or trademark, (assuming the entity whose IP was violated wanted to clear this up through OGL channels) the first step would be to notify the offender and give them thirty days to fix the problem. If that did not happen, the interaction during this period might well strengthen any subsequent lawsuit.

 

[Morrus]

I pity the company which believes its customers do not deserve answers to their questions, no matter how (il)legitimate these end up being. This, I believe, certainly would constitute corporate arrogance at its finest. This is not a stab at WotC's decision to answer or not joe's question. It is, however, a stab at the biased logic behind your argument, Morrus.

No; customers "deserve" a certain level of customer service and support regarding their transaction with the company in question. Purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to an answer to any question you desire, and it especially doesn't entitle you to demand that WotC formulate legal policies on an internet messageboard.

There are some questions which it would be good form for WotC to answer on a board like this (questions about upcoming products, for example); there are other questions, such as this one, where is would be appalling bad business practice for them to do, and completely unprofessional. They'd have to be insane to answer this question here.

No company operates like this, including WotC.

 

[jaerdaph]

Purchasing a product doesn't entitle you to an answer to any question you desire, and it especially doesn't entitle you to demand that WotC formulate legal policies on an internet messageboard.

Speak for yourself, Morrus. If I do not know how much WotC spends on paperclips annually, subtotaled by standard and jumbo sizes, I cannot fully enjoy their products to full potential.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I wasn't going to reply to this thread, since the issues it raises were well and truly thrashed into the ground three years ago, but I just want to add to certain points of fact.

WoTC legal are well aware of OSRIC; Stuart Marshall the author has been in conversation with them about it back in 2006. They didn't threaten to sue him. Nor did they give him authorisation.

I was, in fact, never in direct correspondence with WOTC legal.

I did receive an email from Rich Redman, then Brand Licensing Manager, but not a lawyer. He wanted me to cease distribution of OSRIC. His grounds were that OSRIC was not compliant with the D20 license.

I wrote back to Mr Redman and explained that OSRIC didn't pretend to be compliant with the D20 license, and was in fact entirely reliant on the OGL.

Mr Redman apologised for not adequately doing his homework and then said he wanted me to cease distribution of OSRIC anyway. His basic point was the duck test: OSRIC looks like 1e, it quacks like 1e, so in his view it must be wrong to distribute it.

I replied highlighting various points of fact and various representations WOTC had already made, both in public and in private correspondence.

Mr Redman said this was beyond him and he would get WOTC legal to contact me.

This was in August 2006 and I'm still waiting for their email. I suspect they've figured it out, though, and will never pursue the matter.

The subtext behind OSRIC, and all the other retro-clones, is around computer gaming. You see, there's a duck test there too: a lot of computer games are, in their underlying concepts and algorithms, very similar.

Representatives of computer games companies are very interested in the possibility of a precedent that would establish, in US copyright law, exactly what constitutes a "rule" and what constitutes "artistic presentation". Any lawsuit involving OSRIC and WOTC could establish important precedents.

What that would almost certainly mean is an awful lot of money in amicus curiae. I don't particularly want to go there, and I think it likely that WOTC don't want to go there either.

My impression is that the author of OSRIC is a serious person

OSRIC is Serious Business.

WoTC would be ill advised to bring a lawsuit against him that would probably fail (note he's in the UK and our law is not as plaintiff friendly as US law)

Just to explain that to non-British readers, one key difference is in rules of procedure. In Britain the loser pays the winner's legal costs, which means you have to win your case on the legal merit of your argument; you can't just spend the other side into submission.

 

[Hairfoot]

Joethelawyer was perhaps a bit presumptuous in calling for Scott Rouse in particular, but I have no truck with this "careful or WotC might hear you" approach.

If the clones are potentially a target for Hasbro's legal department, I want to know now, because the only reason they're not throwing cease-and-desists around is because they don't see a threat to Hasbro profits.

"Big Brother will destroy your game if it becomes popular" is not a reasonable or tolerable situation for people to game under.

 

[xechnao]

Speak for yourself, Morrus. If I do not know how much WotC spends on paperclips annually, subtotaled by standard and jumbo sizes, I cannot fully enjoy their products to full potential.

Oh come on. This has nothing to do with it and no one is on the right here. The matter or the debate is mostly political and highly relevant. The way I understand it, this has been the interactive forum of the 3pp industry. What matters should rise, on what form and style, how tough the debate should be it is all political and relevant.

 

[Piratecat]

P&P, thanks for that clarification.

If I were going to make a guess - and that's all this is, a guess - WotC took a look at this and said "we think it's an infringement, but what does a lawsuit trigger? Disappointed fans and poor PR, all to shut down people who aren't making significant money from the game and who love D&D. Lots of downside, very little upside." So they've chosen to delay legal action in the hopes that it flies under the radar until something changes that forces them to address it.