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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7659814" data-attributes="member: 6779310">I am not a lawyer. I am especially not your lawyer. This is not legal advice.In the US...Trademarks have to be defended or they can be voided. If the generator was using trademarked terms, then, in order to not lose them, WotC MUST order the host to take them down when they become aware of them. Failure to do so can void the trademark. You can, however, use someone else's trademarks, provided you properly acknowledge them. (I've only received one takedown notice in 25 years on the internet... because I put up a page about the element Palladium, and Palladium games sent a sneering C&D... which I proceeded to threaten to sue them over, because it's obvious that the page had nothing to do with their game... Never got a reply back. Not a summons.)Copyrights do not have to be aggressively defended, but there's a misconception that they do. If a company is shown to have lax policies regarding their copyrighted materials, however, it can reduce damages awarded when they do crack down on some particular abuser. (As has been noted in several legal decisions I've read.)The combination of Copyright and Trademark violations absolutely requires them to act because they are part of a public stock company. Failure to act puts the board and the VP's under potential lawsuit threat for failure to act in the company's best interests; they have a legal duty/obligation to maximize profits. Loss of the trademarks and devaluation of the copyrights is in fact grounds for removal of VP's and/or the BoD as it stands to reduce profits. And their job is not content creation nor fan support; their one and only job, under the law, is to generate profits — fan support and publications are methods for generating profits, not the goals themselves.Given the imperatives, that they started with polite C&D letters is a sure sign of sensitivity to fan desires. They could have pulled a GW, and started with an ultimatum: "Take down within 30 days or we sue you." They cannot, at present, go straight to the lawsuit mode; Even GW can't, as the copyright law and trademark law both require the C&D letter as a first remedy attempt.The ones not getting takedowns are probably acknowledging the trademarks and paraphrasing the rules. That's legal. (TSR v. Mayfair Games). And they aren't using 5E trade dress. (ibid.)Moreover, Hasbro has a crack team of lawyers - and it's not hard to see where the generators are infringing, if you know where to look and what to look for.So it boils down to this TL/DR: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">infringements against the basic rules have less damage potential because the basic rules are free.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Infringements against the PHB and other non-free works have significant damage potential, because of loss of sales</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">failure to act shows a permissiveness that can reduce the claimable damages in Copyright and can void the Trademarks.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The higherups must protect the IP under US laws.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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