PatrickLawinger said:
I completely agree there. I would suggest studying the SRD, d20 license and all other info you can find to create a list of specific questions to ask. I would also suggest finding a lawyer with a good reputation for giving solid advice. The biggest key is to avoid taking something from a message board as gospel. Even the few lawyers on these boards will add a disclaimer about their post not being legal advice ...
Specific questions are good, yup. Although if you ask a lawyer "Will I win this case?" the answer is almost always "maybe" - not really worth the £100+ they charge you. If you want a basic guide to IP law there are plenty of free solid advice sites online; for a member of the public the Electronic Frontier Foundations eff.org and chillingeffects.org are a good place to start; you need to be aware of the bias of the site of course - chillingeffects is pro consumer and pro free use, if you look at eg the WIPO site you'll get pro-producer bias, etc. Large law firms usually make their money from large producer corporations & will tend to take a pro-producer view of IP law (as will most US court of first instance judges in my experience, so not wholly unwaranted!).
While I would not advocate taking message board advice as gospel; it may provide a useful starting point to do your own research. No single lawyer's advice is gospel either, and because they can be sued their advice is often too noncommittal to be any use. People posting to message boards almost always have their own bias/viewpoint, so a variety of opinions is good. Some are wholly ignorant or outdated - "first you register your copyright..."; some may reflect industry practice which may differ from what the statutes say; eg IP industries tend to see eg trademark rights as much more absolute rights than the law indicates. Still, law often 'evolves' in line with industry practice, as in the anti-dilution of famous TM laws, so it's worth knowing:
1. What the statute law says
2. How the industry behaves - their own internal viewpoint
3. How judges (or abitrartors) are likely to decide a case at first instance & on appeal
4. Most importantly, whether somebody might sue you and whether you are prepared to defend even a victorious action.
Advice based on the likely ultimate decision of an appeals court may be accurate but misleading and potentially dangerous - if I am a small business and it takes me years and vast sums of money to defend a lawsuit, I'm probably better off not to have gone there in the first place. If WoTC can sue me for allegedly infringing their IP, the fact that they would ultimately lose may not be the most important fact.
I'd say the most important fact as mentioned above is that WoTC takes a fairly benevolent view and if you ask for permission to use their 'product identity' it may be granted.
