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Message: <blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 4150017" data-attributes="member: 20740">Intellectual Property protections: - Copyright is for specific expressions of an idea (more than a few words). - Trademark is for names and symbols. - Patent is for process or idea.The only one of these that applies to the underlying system of 4e is patent.  To my knowledge WotC has not filed for patents on their gaming mechanics.  And even if they did, it would likely crumble under the clause of prior art or obviousness.  If WotC attempted to patent the complete system as a whole, it would easy to change a few things around to create a new system (possibly one that tooke elements from the SRD) that would not fall under the aegis of the patent.  If WotC tried to patent individual subsystems, it would not be difficult to find prior systems that would invalidate the patent.The OGL never needed to exist to create 3x compatible products.  The reason for it was that it allowed straight copy and pasting of standard mechanics for ease of development and consistency.  When 4e comes out, it is quite within a developer's rights to copy the mechanics of the system, re-express them in their own words (preferably learning the rules of 4e via an intermediary so that the implementation is "clean room"), and release it under the OGL so that 3rd party developers can write compatible products from a single standard.  Of course, if WotC chose to make this person's life difficult it would likely be a drawn out legal battle buried in minutia.</blockquote>

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