WinningerR
Explorer
Mourn said:One thing I would like to point out is that Mayfair Games was found guilty of trademark agreement violations in some of their "AD&D compatible" products, but not all. So, there is precedent for non-licensed "support" products being a violation of trademark rights, which would potentially work against anyone trying something like that today.
Not true.
Mayfair published a series of unlicensed AD&D adventures. TSR sued.
As the case neared trial, TSR's lawyers decided that they were unlikely to win. As long as you observe a few reasonable restrictions, there's nothing in the law to stop you from producing supplements compatible with somebody else's game system. In fact, you can even use the system's trademark to indicate compatibility--"suitable for use with Dungeons & Dragons"--so long as there is no chance that a reasonable consumer would mistake your product for an official D&D product. (This is known as "fair use." It's why companies like Belkin can label some of their products as "suitable for use with iPod," for instance.) Convincing the court that the Mayfair products were likely to be mistaken as official TSR releases wasn't going to be easy.
Once TSR's lawyers decided that they were unlikely to win they offered Mayfair a settlement before the lawsuit went to trial--TSR agreed to grant Mayfair a perepetual royalty free license to produce AD&D material. TSR offered the settlement to avoid expensive litigation, to remove the risk that they might go to trial and lose (thus establishing a precedent and clearly signalling to every other publisher in the industry that they could all produce AD&D-compatible products), and to exercise at least some control over what Mayfair was doing (the license included some additional restrictions on Mayfair's product line). Mayfair accepted the settlement to avoid costly litigation and to secure a somewhat unique position in the industry. (They alone would possess a license to produce AD&D material; others would have to brave legal uncertainty and stand up to TSR's lawyers to produce their own AD&D-compatible product.)
Mayfair merrily operated under this license for several years.
Eventually, TSR filed another lawsuit alleging that some of Mayfair's products were not honoring the terms of the license. Before this second case was resolved, Mayfair decided to exit the RPG business altogether. TSR and Mayfair settled the suit by agreeing that TSR would purchase all rights to Mayfair's AD&D product line (effectively buying back the AD&D license as well). In fact, a couple of AD&D manuscripts that I commissioned for Mayfair (Chronomancer and Shaman) were later published by TSR.
Thus, Mayfair was never found "guilty" of anything--there was never even a trial.