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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8913711" data-attributes="member: 42582">Section 1 tells us that &quot;'Contributors' means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed Open Game Content&quot;. Not parties who might enjoy a contractual power to sub-license the OGC.More generally, as I have posted multiple times there are, in my view, various candidate textual interpretations available. Yours may be one. I don't think it's the most natural, though - the power to sub-license is one incident of the permission to use, which is a legal relationship to the owner of the copyright in the OGC; and to me your suggested interpretation makes it more complicated to understand how the content of the sub-licence is established, as that becomes mediated through a notice that is not attached to the whole of the licensed work but rather to some (potentially limited) reproduction of it by a downstream licensee.I could see an argument that the downstream licensee enjoys some sort of authority to notify on behalf of the licensor who is named in the section 15 statement. But it would be open to argue that if the copyright owner has withdrawn their notice, and that is known to those who read the licensee's notice, then the authority is gone.I reiterate that I don't have a definite, let alone dogmatic, view about the best textual construction. I also think that a 3PP defendant would almost certainly wish to rely on considerations beyond the text - ie WotC's other conduct and representations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8913711, member: 42582"] Section 1 tells us that "'Contributors' means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed Open Game Content". Not parties who might enjoy a contractual power to sub-license the OGC. More generally, as I have posted multiple times there are, in my view, various candidate textual interpretations available. Yours may be one. I don't think it's the most natural, though - the power to sub-license is one incident of the permission to use, which is a legal relationship to the owner of the copyright in the OGC; and to me your suggested interpretation makes it more complicated to understand how the content of the sub-licence is established, as that becomes mediated through a notice that is not attached to the whole of the licensed work but rather to some (potentially limited) reproduction of it by a downstream licensee. I could see an argument that the downstream licensee enjoys some sort of authority to notify on behalf of the licensor who is named in the section 15 statement. But it would be open to argue that if the copyright owner has withdrawn their notice, and that is known to those who read the licensee's notice, then the authority is gone. I reiterate that I don't have a definite, let alone dogmatic, view about the best textual construction. I also think that a 3PP defendant would almost certainly wish to rely on considerations beyond the text - ie WotC's other conduct and representations. [/QUOTE]

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