Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[Maxperson]

"Perpetual, irrevocable, perpetually and irrevocably authorized, immortal, and eternal." ?

Irrevocable is enough. If @mamba was correct in his assertion that perpetual means irrevocable, then lawyers would never have bothered to clarify licenses by adding irrevocable to them. They wouldn't have needed to because perpetual would have been sufficient. It's not.

The lawyers added it because perpetual only means that the license is good for an indefinite amount of time. Some courts only look at the document to see if a license was meant to be irrevocable or not, and some courts look beyond at other documentation and testimony. There is no clear precedent for WotC to hang it's hat on here. Lawyers here and elsewhere are split on whether WotC can revoke the license or not.

If OGL 1.0a had the term irrevocable in it, WotC would be stupid to actually sue anyone and claim "deauthorization" was different from revocation. Deauthorization is only being used right now because OGL 1.0a doesn't say that it's irrevocable.

 

[mamba]

Irrevocable is enough. If @mamba was correct in his assertion that perpetual means irrevocable, then lawyers would never have bothered to clarify licenses by adding irrevocable to them.

The GPL v2 is perpetual and irrevocable, it does not contain the word irrevocable. This was settled in court.

It was added to v3 when that was created just so it does not need settling. I suspect the same is true for many other licenses that came after this (the OGL came before…)

Finally, “A non-exclusive copyright license (such as most FOSS licenses) can be revoked at any time only if there was no consideration involved. The United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeal took this on in Jacobsen v. Katzer in 2008 and ruled that there is consideration exchanged in the use of FOSS by a licensee. This indicates that an FOSS license that's silent on revocation is likely revocable only for violation of it's conditions”

The OGL involves consideration

WotC uses deauthorization because no one knows what that is, it is not the same as revocation, because if it were, it would be clear what it is

 

[The Stray]

This seems relevant to the discussion:

 

[Greg Benage]

The OGL involves consideration

I think this is the key question that would need to be resolved by a specific court in a specific case.

 

[S'mon]

I think this is the key question that would need to be resolved by a specific court in a specific case.

It does actually say that licensees provide Consideration! Remember it was specifically created to stop what WoTC is trying to do now. Present WoTC is at war with past WoTC.

 

[S'mon]

This seems relevant to the discussion:

His IP analysis seems sound to me.

 

[The Stray]

His IP analysis seems sound to me.

I've been following him on this, and he's done his damndest to get as much info and clear analysis on this issue as he can, including one of the more in-depth interviews with Ryan Dancey. He's been really good at breaking this all down.

 

[Greg Benage]

It does actually say that licensees provide Consideration! Remember it was specifically created to stop what WoTC is trying to do now. Present WoTC is at war with past WoTC.

No doubt past statements by former WotC employees would play a role in resolving the question!

 

[S'mon]

I've been following him on this, and he's done his damndest to get as much info and clear analysis on this issue as he can

Yes - better than Leagle Eagle. I got the impression LE isn't an IP lawyer, at any rate he didn't engage with the important Idea vs Expression dichotomy.

 

[Jerik]

So perpetual and irrevocable have meanings in law.

Do they?

"Irrevocable" does not have an inherent meaning divorced from context and divorced from the parties' intentions. In a very real sense, "irrevocable" means whatever the parties to the agreement want it to mean; or perhaps it is better to say "irrevocable" means whatever the court thinks the parties to the agreement want it to mean. Different parties will have different intentions in different contexts.

The meaning of an agreement is the intention of the parties to the agreement, either as expressed in the agreement itself (the usual method) or through parole evidence of intention when there is ambiguity in the agreement. Very rarely does the meaning of an agreement depend on its use of magic words such as "irrevocable" in the text of the agreement itself.

Lawyers here and elsewhere are split on whether WotC can revoke the license or not.

Well, yes, lawyers here are technically split on that, but only in the sense that one lawyer posting in this thread said they could, and every other lawyer posting in the thread said that lawyer was wrong.

I don't think any other lawyer posting in the thread has agreed with the OP. I don't. @S'mon doesn't. @Steel_Wind doesn't. @bmcdaniel doesn't.

I won't even get into a discussion about the minefield and inapplicability of any principles of real property, easements, licensees and adverse possession on this issue - which is the legal context in which a license to enter onto land is considered. The entire principle under discussion of a license to enter property is, therefore, dramatically different. Indeed, it is so different, your reference to it confirms to me that you must be a junior lawyer with no experience in this area at all. It should be a cue to just stop.

He wouldn't listen to me when I gave this advice. I hope he listens to you. But I think you're correct - we're dealing with someone who can't have been practicing very long.