Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 4843544" data-attributes="member: 3400">You're right. Law is not sorcery. It and the courts, however, are subject to all the foibles of humanity. People will and do use the law and manipulate courts for their own aims even out of proportion to their pretext for using the law in the first place. Patent trolls file claims, often dubious, in order to try to get a quick settlement out of companies that would rather not pay the financial costs of discovery and risk the dangers of damages. Corporations, or other bodies with deep pockets, use financial attrition against opponents whose claims may be just but who don't have the financial endurance to keep litigating.So it's not exactly any wonder that the courts have a negative popular reputation. Either we hear about stories involving the issues above or, when some person actually gets a well deserved damage award perhaps with punative damages, spin control will take over and pundits will lament that the penalized corporation will now have to lay people off or will only pass on the cost of the damages to the consumers anyway.That said, even a negative view of corporations and the courts makes it hard to conclude that Hasbro/WotC really has much of a leg to stand on to force a withdrawal of the OGL or sue anybody under it. The stakes simply aren't large enough for them to spend too much effort in finding or manufacturing a pretext. Give the D&D IP rights to a holding company that has no other business model and I think we'd see some action in this regard.</blockquote>

Verification