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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5486413" data-attributes="member: 42582">Pawsplay, just a few things in your reply that I wanted to pick up on - I think the rest speaks for itself as an alternative view to mine on the character of the OGL/SRD/GSL.My impression is that marketing under trade dress is at least seen by those in the industry as making a difference. Whether this is seen as important at the level of distribution or retail (ie who has to be told that this no-frills supplement is just like a D&D supplement?) I don't know.That's true. But the authors of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail probably didn't invent many of the words in their book either, yet they still had a coherent (if ultimately unsuccessful) suit against Dan Brown. Copyright doesn't reside in the invidual words but in the work, which may be a distinctive concatenation of those individual words. Table design and layout would also count. I'm not enough of an IP lawyer to have a view as to when copyrightability would emerge, but I don't think it's absurd to imagine that WotC has a prima facie claim to copyright in its equipment tables, and particularly in those tables as an element of a bigger work which is itself distinguished by further unique characteristics.With the vacuum bags there is no issue of copyright, only trademark. For the wii-compatible controllers I can't comment, as I don't know enough about how they work and how much copyrighted software (if any) they replicate. For Cliffs Notes there is fair use, and probably also permission from the copyright holder for any substantial reproductions of text (admittedly I don't have any Cliffs Notes handy, but it is the norm in academic publishing at least to get permissions for such reproductions).I think that RPG material is somewhat distinctive in combining copyright issues (reproduction of text) with trademark issues (the product, in order to sell, must hang on the coattails of someother product). And unlike a hoover bag, from the point of view of WotC it is a product in competition with its sales rather than complementary to them. (And this difference in market status is itself of relevance to the legal characterisation of any potential IP infringement - that is, IP law is not indifferent to the market characteristics of an alleged infringement.)Again, I don't know enough about the software issues. My understanding is also that Microsoft is governed by various anti-monopoly considerations, although perhaps I am wrong about that, or at least about its implications for authoring the Windows game.Well, the first thing that WotC would do is deny that your module - let alone your OGL+SRD clone - is software for their system at all. They would allege that, so far from being a complementary product, it is a competing product. And that allegation wouldn't be obviously fanciful.</blockquote>

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