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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catsclaw" data-source="post: 4150002" data-attributes="member: 59911">Of course, right now it's anyone guess whether the Harry Potter Lexicon is an infringement or not.  Court date rescheduled for April 14.  I suspect after that case gets ruled on (assuming it's not settled first) the legality of publishing an OGL 4e supplement will be slightly clearer.  Although still rather murky.If the Harry Potter Lexicon is legal, it would seem to imply that a Rules Cyclopedia type product for 4e would also be legal, provided you rewrote the text of the abilities in your own words.  You'd probably be on even better footing if you included discussions about the rules, how they're balanced, a look at how the rules have evolved through different games, and other scholarly information.Another interesting distinction between the Harry Potter case and 4e is that you can copyright fictional facts.  You can't copyright game rules.  So your theoretical Rules Cyclopedia would be on even stronger ground, to start.NOTE: I am not suggesting attempting any of the above is a good idea.  Copyright law in general is an utter mess.  The court could rule against the Lexicon publishers.  Legal or not, WotC would certainly try to sue you out of existence.  If there's a GSL, you are strongly advised to stay within its bounds.  That's actually part of the genius of the OGL--creating a "safe harbor" where both WotC and 3rd party publishers can agree on what the bounds of copyright are, and nobody has to drag anyone else into court to find out what that is.</blockquote>

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