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While it's not conclusive, he did co-write a FR novel "The Paladins" in which the name was used, which makes it a possibility he signed those rights over as part of the novel text. I'm not entirely sure what the legal position is with novel text (especially as we don't know whether he was on a...

Yeah, there's pretty much no way such a simple, non-unique term could be claimed. It fails both tests for a trademark - it is neither used in commerce (they do not use it for their own products, it does not appear on the covers of books, in titles, or in any real form whatsoever. In fact, WotC...

Without looking it up, it feels like because Drawmij was used as a character in Forgotten Realms, as well as in at least two spell names, thereby fairly clearly making it Wizards' IP. It'd be like trying to put Elminster in your game. The fact it was created by using a definable process on...

By far my biggest issue at this point is this: - The attempt to make a unilateral alteration of the terms of a perpetual agreement, when said agreement contains no mechanism for them to do so. If you and I make an agreement and say "these are the terms, forever", that's it IMO. Any change...

In the interests of trying to come to an agreeable position: I would be absolutely fine with that single rider as long as there is no way for WotC to decide what "hate speech" means on any given day simply to remove a competitor who made a silly mistake with a piece of artwork. It's possible...

Company X, at the very least, needs to be one who cannot benefit materially from those decisions, who has no conflict of interest and will not therefore be tempted to make changes in the future to swing things in favor of their own profits.

Hypothetical: They've learned their lesson and do not want to annoy pretty much the whole community. They still want to push out certain competitors. This time they do it incrementally. One little change here, another a couple of months later. One or two small competitors at first, which...

I feel the only way to answer this for sure would be a test case in court. For arguments sake, lets assume this is also for a game that does not utilize WotC's SRD, so their only involvement is owning copyright of the license itself. My initial feelings are that the terms of license in...

I would agree with this, except for 3PPs that do not do D&D-adjacent work (e.g anyone using ORC to use content from non-d20 games written by Chaosium, Green Ronin, etc) , who would probably be more comfortable using a license that is not copyrighted by WotC. Now, if we could all go back to 2000...

Indeed, but the original OGL was 'can do anything', and people have built up businesses based on their ability to do just that. Pulling the rug from under them because WotC doesn't want alternative competing VTTs, etc, is not acceptable. What 1.1 does is turn to some people and say "hey, that...

The issue here is what they want those controls for. If it was possible to assure me that they will only ever use those controls to go after bad actors, I would not have a problem. My problem is I believe they will also use it to go after competition, because 1.1 was obviously doing exactly...

The SRDs are released with a copy of the OGL attached. In that combination, the OGL is the bit that grants rights to reuse it. The SRD itself does not grant permission to use it. The concept of "revoking the SRD" has no legal meaning, it'd be like me saying "I revoke oxygen", there's nothing...

Not a lawyer, but SRD 5.1's permitted usage is solely because of OGL 1.0(a)* There does not appear to be any way they can remove the OGL communities rights to SRD 5.1 other than by preventing its further use under OGL 1.0(a), and that requires alterations to the terms of the OGL, not to the...

It's also providing 3PPs want to continue with the risk of using the OGL after all of this anyway. The threat alone has been enough to trigger "fire sales" of people clearing out their OGL inventory, and for a number of large players to decide to set up an alternative license with clearer terms...

Yes, if they can pull the 1.0a authorization and force us to update to a later one. Everything currently hinges on that being disputed. The fact it is even a question is bad enough. But, agreement to 1.1 expressly and definitively requires you, if you accept it, to visit their website and...

Considering the discussions were of the "hey, we're thinking about doing this thing that could totally destroy your business next week" variety, then not wanting to share a pool with WotC any more does not feel like a bad idea.

As someone wanting to move away from anything WotC-adjacent, I cannot dispute this. I do not feel they made a move, I feel they have scared me into wanting to make one.

It is absolulely my worry that the new OGL will still contain a clause allowing them to change the terms in the future and revoke your usage if you do not agree, allowing them to selectively prune people in small enough numbers that it doesn't upset the entire audience at once. Push out a VTT...

That was a complicated case - some judgements went for GW, some against. It looks like they'd obviously listed absolutely anything they could possibly think of, to see what they could get away with, from fairly solid claims to fairly ludicrous ones. It also didn't involve any type of license...

Potentially. Except for many of us, we don't just want to release a product, but keep releasing more products that build on one another for the forseeable future. The OP does not state whether this is the case or not in their hypothetical, but under the assumption they only care about this one...