"Poaching" OGC

[Roudi]

It kinda depresses me that common courtesy needs to be explained.

Perhaps someone needs to do an OGL supplement on the subject, to fill this niche?


it sounded funny in my head, I swear.

 

[Vigilance]

So in the case of Modern20, how much OGC would you permit fellow third-party publishers to support your product line, and how much would be crossing the line of poaching?

It's hard to give a definitive answer here. There's things someone could do with Modern20 that would lead me to not support it, and there's things someone could do (more things) that I would support and would actually help to cross market as much as I can, how's that?

Beyond that, it comes down to the rules of the OGL and the rules of the OBS site.

And of course, Karma. It's been my experience that what goes around comes around, and Karma eventually comes to get some folks.

 

[Vigilance]

I think it's cool you want people comfortable with the usage of your ogl material!

But... without any way of actually being able to claim compatability with M20, it's hard for other publishers to create material specifically geared for the M20 system and be able to SAY that without opening ourselves up to a lawsuit.

Since we can't actually claim compatability with M20 because you have (understandably) copyrighted the logo, there's not any really good way to differentiate between an OGL M20 product and an OGL D20 modern product.

I for one would like say, a license, allowing third party publishers to purchase limited rights to the M20 logo (like True20), for X number of products per year.

It would certainly help build recognition of M20, which is good for everyone.

As it stands, there just isn't any way to say "hey this is an M20 product!" without breaking the law.

Right, which is the only real power I have to encourage folks to support Modern20, the ability to say "yes, you can say this is a Modern20 product".

And even more than that, the ability to myself say to folks "I've read this book, I like it, if you run Modern20 you should pick this up".

Though that's a sort of unwritten thing, it is one of the things that makes me more comfortable releasing a book like Modern20.

 

[Vigilance]

Actually, I've been thinking about this and I believe I'm wrong about being able to use a title like "Jobs20."

A precedent has been set with other game titles such as "True20", "simple20", "quick20" and now "Modern20."

Theoretically, you could put out a Modern20 supplement without the M20 logo and call it "Jobs20" because it isn't really a proprietary term.

I guess that's one way third party publishers could publish M20-based supplements. So long as they are very specific in their product descriptions there shouldn't be a problem indicating what the content of the book is based on.

I_think_that's right. I'm no lawyer though.

I'm not a lawyer either. My sense of things is that if you called it Jobs20 as you wrote it, you'd be ok. If you called it Jobs<superscript>20</superscript> that would be dicier.

 

[Vigilance]

But anyway, to me this whole discussion is moot.

As I've stated earlier, I think most *publishers* want to do their own thing, since no one is in this for the money, and most consumers seem to want original material as well for their personal toybox.

 

[Ranger REG]

It's hard to give a definitive answer here. There's things someone could do with Modern20 that would lead me to not support it, and there's things someone could do (more things) that I would support and would actually help to cross market as much as I can, how's that?

That leads me to believe that you have something to protect within this body of work. Perhaps you should reconsider the use of PI.

I know you don't want Modern20 to be tied to a crappy product, be it poorly written, poorly designed, and/or poorly creative.

 

[Roudi]

If I write a crappy product intended to support Modern20, Vigilance can say "Roudi you schmuck, you can't mention Modern20 in this product." Which means my P-O-S does not associate itself with the Modern20 brand and, thus, Vig's rep is untarnished.

That's the power of the very precise PI declaration Vig made in Modern20. Really, no further protection is necessary.

 

[Ranger REG]

If I write a crappy product intended to support Modern20, Vigilance can say "Roudi you schmuck, you can't mention Modern20 in this product." Which means my P-O-S does not associate itself with the Modern20 brand and, thus, Vig's rep is untarnished.

That's the power of the very precise PI declaration Vig made in Modern20. Really, no further protection is necessary.

Considering that Modern20 is already designated PI, you shouldn't use it in the first place (other than in Section 15 Copyright Notice), at least not without securing permission from PI owner.

I guess I'm trying to determine at what level or amount of OGC used from a source like Modern20 does it become a concern for poaching, other than blatantly using all OGC from said source.

 

[Nellisir]

I guess I'm trying to determine at what level or amount of OGC used from a source like Modern20 does it become a concern for poaching, other than blatantly using all OGC from said source.

If a publisher reprinted large sections of OGC without significant additions or contributions (barring some sort of compilation of OGC), then the material is poached.

I believe the OGL term is "an improvement to prior art".

It's less about the amount reused than the purpose in its reuse. There's also a question of intent. If you use OGC from a product, with the intent of competing directly with that product, then there's probably a much lower level of reuse needed for the public to find you guilty of "poaching".

You can't just say "anything more than 75% is poaching". It's not that cut and dry.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

I guess I'm trying to determine at what level or amount of OGC used from a source like Modern20 does it become a concern for poaching, other than blatantly using all OGC from said source.

Dude, you're trying to quantify something that has no defined measure. Gareth pointed it out above, this is all about common courtesy. If you are using some OGC from a product, fine; if you use some OGC and derive something to it, add some extra value, even better; if you grab a significant amount of OGC from a product, repackage it without any added value, that's poaching.