removed

[Cergorach]

Although it would be great if the D&D logo was used, i just don't see it happening. Placing third party publishers on the same footing as WotC would be foolhardy. The D&D brand is far too valuable and too many 3rd party products cover the same ground as WotC products.

Kenzer & Co only published setting specific material for their official D&D setting Kingdoms of Kalamar.
The same goes for Arthouse and their official D&D Ravenloft setting.

While some of those materials might have been interesting for the general D&D gamer, i doubt it had a serious impact on the WotC Sales. But what if the Tome of Horrors had the official D&D stamp of approval on it? I think it would have been an excellent seller and the Monster Manual sales would have been hurt (a lot), same goes for all the splat books...

 

[Ranger REG]

In my opinion, if WotC "closed" the next edition of D&D it would just re-introduce the exact same legal question back on the table -- the old familiar faces of "what is copyrightable" and "what is non-infringeable" about terms like Armor Class, Orc, Goblin, Kobold, etc. With the OGL, you actually stipulate that you're making certain key concessions about what's IP and what's not in order to publish contention-free under the license. Except now that the OGL's out of the bag, the terms like "Armor Class," "Hit Points," etc. etc. are quite useable, which makes any changes WotC makes for a new edition very likely easy to overcome for 3rd party publishers.

No doubt that WotC may have to make changes for 4e material.

After all, they once tried to calm everyone that 3.5e is still backward compatible to 3.0e, and most of the fan community don't believe them.

They could revoke the d20 Trademark license, or change it from royalty-FREE to royalty-FEE.