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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Frylock" data-source="post: 5496091" data-attributes="member: 38140">Hobbits / Not NiceIIRC (and I might not), Tolkein's estate sued over use of the term, Hobbit. After that, Gygax changed the term to Halfling. Granted, Hobbit was used in conjunction with a description largely matching that of Tolkein's Hobbit, but the operative point here is that all that changed was "Hobbit," and yet copyright was satisfied by the change. Also note that at that point, D&D was the "little guy." Without a clear recollection of what actually happened, take my point with a grain of salt.Actually, dmccoy1693 clarified his position, stating that by “not nice,” he meant “not safe,” so you don’t get where he’s coming from. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /> (Maybe he agrees with "not nice" too. I don't know.)   That’s a very bad position to take. Consider the following two hypotheticals. First, tomorrow I submit a patent application for a toaster. I pay hundreds of dollars to the USPTO, and thousands of dollars to my attorney. About one year later, I receive a letter from the USPTO reading something to the effect,  Now, word gets out about this, and all of America says, Do you see a problem with this rationale? All these competent toaster makers being put out of business just because you want to be nice to me, the idiot that thought he had a claim on the toaster that’s been in the public domain for over 100 years (invented in the UK in 1893). Is that good for the economy?But wait! There's a better example. At least at some point in the past, the toaster was theoretically patentable. What if Einstein tried to patent the theory of relativity? This is subject matter that may not be patented at all. What if everyone decided to “play nice” and voluntarily grant him the sole right to teach relativity. Wouldn’t that stifle the field of physics? Considering the authority for US patents and copyrights, the Arts and Sciences clause of the Constitution, makes it clear that the purpose of patents and trademarks is to "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," I’d say this cuts against why we have patents and copyrights in the first place.Intellectual property is possibly the most important legal invention to our economy. Having power over your “arts and sciences” is extremely important. [OPINION ALERT!] While it’s clear the pendulum has swung too far with copyrights towards the owner[\OPINION ALERT!], and while the copyright monopoly is much weaker than the patent monopoly, nevertheless it’s important[\B] that WotC control its property. Nevertheless, it’s important to the economy that they not have control over what they don’t own.IANAE (I am not an economist), but I bet they'd agree with me. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /></blockquote>

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