Does Final Fantasy currently rely on a licence on the terms of the OGL v 1.0a? If not, I don't see how any of this affects that publisher.
Class action lawsuit?
Sacrosanct
Legend
The only way I can see it working is if Hasbro revokes the OGL, keeping people from selling their OGL stuff, then it goes to court and it's ruled that Hasbro never had the right to revoke the license. Then you have to prove how much you lost in sales between the two points in time.
I don't know the legality of it, but I think it stands to reason that most 3PP were of the understanding that the OGL could not be revoked. Heck, I literally just spend upwards of $60K making a book using the OGL that just came out, so revoking it now would be...very untimely for me. Especially since I just got the inventory of books a month ago and now I might not be able to sell them?
Hey Hasbro, buy up my inventory if you're gonna pull that nonsense.
I don't know the legality of it, but I think it stands to reason that most 3PP were of the understanding that the OGL could not be revoked. Heck, I literally just spend upwards of $60K making a book using the OGL that just came out, so revoking it now would be...very untimely for me. Especially since I just got the inventory of books a month ago and now I might not be able to sell them?
Hey Hasbro, buy up my inventory if you're gonna pull that nonsense.
I can't give you legal advice, but can speak to some of the general legal issues in play.
Hasbro/WotC have not purported to revoke any licences issued on the terms of the OGL, as best I can tell. And I am one of those who think the better view is that their is a good reason for this, namely, that they lack any legal power to do so.
But suppose they do so purport. If licensed publishers continue to publish relying on their licence from WotC, WotC would have to commence the suit arguing that the licence is in fact revoked and hence that the publisher is infringing. The licensee publisher would plead the licence in their defence.
I haven't heard of any scenario yet in which a 3PP has a good reason to commence against WotC, which to me would sound quite a difficult undertaking.
Slit518
Adventurer
I don't know (probably not), but, I posted them in this in case they would be effected. Who knows how tangled the law and stuff could get?
Final Fantasy has had mindflayers long before there was an OGL. It's been using them since Final Fantasy IV in 1991.
I suspect D&D has missed their chance to pursue that one, but I am not a lawyer.
Aspirinsmurf
Hero
I think it's the word "illithid" and not the concept of a mind flayer that they've specifically claimed as PI under the old OGL 1.0, which I've assumed to mean that they might claim it as an unregistered trademark. But nowadays, it seems like they think that banalities like owlbears and magic missiles are "quintessentially" D&D and off-limits, and that's just opening the gates to hell going forward.
Yeah - that's going to be a mess.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
On TV shows (and based on how they handle fields I know I have negative trust in them being right) when big companies go after little fish, sometime the little fish can STILL band together and ask the judge to combine cases in a way MAKING a class action defense... is there ANYTHING in reality like that?
In case I am not clear my hypothetical law school question is, if Big Company A sues little company B, but it is for something that little company C D E F G H I and J are all doing too, can they all bind together at this point AFTER company A sues?
Would it change things if BIg Company A was suing some or all of C D E F G H I and J?
Yes, but the point is to threaten to take WOTC's money (and give it to the plaintiff's lawyers).
WOTC is concerned enough about this that they put an exclusion to it in their new OGL 1.2.
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