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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4040217" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I said above, I am not an IP lawyer. In the interests of disclosure, I should make it clear that I am an academic lawyer.I'm still not really following. The statutory definition of "derivative work" does not make any reference to infringement or non-infringement (that I noticed), so I can work out whether or not a work is a derivative one without working out whether or not it infringes. And I would have thought that part of what might be involved in proving infringement, where a work is a derivative one, would be proving that certain parts of the work are not the author's own contribution, but are in fact material protected by the copyright of the other author, whose work the derivative work derives from.I don't agree with this, just on my reading of the statute. The law on "derivative works" tells me where copyright in the derivative work comes to an end (namely, the author's own contribution, and not the pre-existing material) and on its face that strikes me as relevant to working out whether or not the derivative work is an infringing one.Maybe your point is simply that (as a matter of law) there is nothing special about derivative works that makes them more or less likely to infringe than any other work. That is true. But as a matter of practice, I would think that many of the features of a work that make it a derivative one (eg adapting an earlier work) are also likely to be features that are problematic from the point of view of copyright infringement (eg distributing what is, in effect, someone else's material). Hence the reason, I imagine, that many translations and adaptations are licensed.There are so many issues here I'm not sure where to start! Let's look at Weapon Focus:that feat description says something along the lines of "you receive a +1 to hit bonus". It therefore, by implication, brings in the rule about to hit bonuses. This rule, again by implication, brings in the rule about BAB, about AC, about rolling d20s to hit, etc.Now, we cannot treat a statement from a case as if it were a statute - but ignoring that caution, let's look at the passage and ask, What is meant by "the topic"? If "the topic" of Weapon Focus is in fact all the rules I've mentioned above, then I'm not at all persuaded that there are a necessarily limited number of ways to express it.RPG rules are nothing like the lottery-type instructions that the case was actually concerned on - they are complex, detailed, integrated rulesets that fill volumes tens or hundreds of pages long. Without hearing the opinion of an IP lawyer on the matter, the finding in that case is not one I would want to try and run with very far away from its facts - especially when you consider the degree of hesitation that seems to accompany the reasoning and the conclusion.Yes, I think so. But trading on someone else's good will would also be involved, I think.Again, I want to hear what an IP lawyer thinks (Mistwell, are you out there?). A version of 4e with the serial numbers filed off would seem to me to be trading almost exclusively on WoTC's goodwill, which  might be a problem. It would be quite different from (for example) the old Mayfair Games supplements for D&D, which actually did something different from any AD&D book publishsed by TSR, and lived or died on their own reputation (and that of Mayfair Games).</blockquote>

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