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<blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9575276" data-attributes="member: 6796468">[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102[/URL]While it has never been tested in court for TTRPGs... but it has been tested for games.[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_v._Amusement_World[/URL]Meteor was practically the same game as Asteroids, though the individual rocks were differently shaped, and ultimately it was decided that no copyright infringement had occurred because a game about a spaceship shooting asteroids is going to look like a spaceship shooting asteroids. Two different videogames about Baseball couldn't sue each other for using the same sort of graphics for the ball, itself, for example.There is the Substantial Similarity test which was show in 1982's Atari vs Philips. Where if you do an exact copy and then tack on a few new things it doesn't suddenly become not-plagiarism. However, writing out your rules from scratch means it's not going to bear substantial similarity, just due to word choice. Note: I'm not referring to &quot;Changing names&quot; I'm referring to re-writing every rule individually. Your own expression of the same concept.There's also the Subtractive Approach test from Nichols vs Universal. Really useful for public domain works being produced by multiple companies but also for stuff with &quot;scènes à faire&quot; (Scenes to be made) which is basically things like generic elements that are essential to a fictional setting and can't be protected. Like Dragons in Fantasy or Swords and Sorcery in... well. Swords and Sorcery. Basically you take out everything that can't be copyrighted and compare what's left. For a TTRPG that's practically nothing.But here's the big one:There's also the fact that it was all released under the Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use it at any time and they no longer have a legal leg to stand on.[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/[/URL]So the point is also kinda moot since you can just make 5e compatible content under the CC-BY-4.0 and WotC can't do anything about it unless you use something specifically infringing (like Mind Flayers).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Steampunkette, post: 9575276, member: 6796468"] [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102[/URL] While it has never been tested in court for TTRPGs... but it has been tested for games. [URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_v._Amusement_World[/URL] Meteor was practically the same game as Asteroids, though the individual rocks were differently shaped, and ultimately it was decided that no copyright infringement had occurred because a game about a spaceship shooting asteroids is going to look like a spaceship shooting asteroids. Two different videogames about Baseball couldn't sue each other for using the same sort of graphics for the ball, itself, for example. There is the Substantial Similarity test which was show in 1982's Atari vs Philips. Where if you do an exact copy and then tack on a few new things it doesn't suddenly become not-plagiarism. However, writing out your rules from scratch means it's not going to bear substantial similarity, just due to word choice. Note: I'm not referring to "Changing names" I'm referring to re-writing every rule individually. Your own expression of the same concept. There's also the Subtractive Approach test from Nichols vs Universal. Really useful for public domain works being produced by multiple companies but also for stuff with "scènes à faire" (Scenes to be made) which is basically things like generic elements that are essential to a fictional setting and can't be protected. Like Dragons in Fantasy or Swords and Sorcery in... well. Swords and Sorcery. Basically you take out everything that can't be copyrighted and compare what's left. For a TTRPG that's practically nothing. But here's the big one: [B]There's also the fact that it was all released under the Creative Commons license, meaning anyone can use it at any time and they no longer have a legal leg to stand on.[/B] [URL unfurl="true"]https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/[/URL] So the point is also kinda moot since you can just make 5e compatible content under the CC-BY-4.0 and WotC can't do anything about it unless you use something specifically infringing (like Mind Flayers). [/QUOTE]

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