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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1581108" data-attributes="member: 10201">Unless, of course, what they used from the Star Wars RPG was too short to be copyrightable, an idea rather than an expression, ineligible for patent protection because it's a game rule, ineligible for patent or copyright because it's an expression of a discovered truth rather than a creative expression (like a math formula); or the use Holistic put it to could be considered sufficiently transformative to be an original work, or in some other way qualify as Fair Use; or what WotC is calling a derivative work isn't in the eyes of the law, and rules-compatible works are completely free and clear and unrestricted and you don't need the WotC OGL to do them in the first place.  Having not read Fading Suns D20 (i've got a pretty significant selection of the real version), i can't say that any of these possibilities do or don't apply. But any of them *could* apply--the legal IP status of RPGs is very much undecided. So simply saying that any similarity between two RPGs must, in the absence of specific permission, involve plagiarism or illegal derivation may or may not be correct.</blockquote>