Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.

[S'mon]

A question for you in your pro bono capacity!: the SRD has almost no fiction for races, and pretty limited for monsters. OSRIC has more than what is in the SRD, and it's modelled on AD&D. An example:

Gnoll raiding parties will be led by a leader with 16 HP. He fights as a 3 HD monster.​

There are mechanics there, but is that primarily a statement of mechanics, or a fictional statemen about gnoll raiding parties?

It's not mechanics or formulae, no. OTOH a single line like that normally does not have copyright protection in UK law, it doesn't meet the de minimis standard.

Presumably you would say it's derived directly from 1e MM pg 46, paragraph 2: "For every 20 gnolls encountered there will be a leader type with 16 hit points (attacks as a 3 hit dice creature)". It certainly looks like it - NB in 1e a 2 hd and a 3hd creature use the same THAC0-16 attack matrix!

But to make a non-literal copyright infringement claim you have to get lots & lots of stuff like that, so that it's collectively substantial, then extract everything in the SRD, which covers eg the concept of the gnoll, and then establish that what remains is a substantial, though non-literal, copying.

This is a pretty Herculean task - and if you fail you risk a judgement that lessens whatever copyright protection games as games have, with potential severe impact on the value of Hasbro's IP portfolio.

 

[S'mon]

I would agree that the strategic dimension to any litigation around the SRD and retro-clones is an important factor. I tend to regard it as a reason to be cautious about inferring that, because WotC is not litigating, it believes that any given retro-clone publisher is compliant under the OGL.

There's a long distance between taking-case-to-judgement (very risky) and sending out a breach-of-OGL notice, though. That they have not done the former may mean they either cannot identify a breach of the OGL, or are not bothered.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], thanks for both replies. I can't XP you again yet, but it's good to hear a sensible and reliable opinion on these things.

 

[S'mon]

Gnoll raiding parties will be led by a leader with 16 HP. He fights as a 3 HD monster.​

Oh, I should also mention that in US copyright law, the defence can argue that "gnoll leaders have 16 hp" is an idea, that there are only a limited number of ways you can express this idea, and that the idea itself is non-protectable, so in the absence of literal copying, a derived work is non-infringing. This is not as clear-cut in the UK precedents, UK courts tend to go more with "too short/trivial to have copyright protection", and IMO UK copyright law on non-literal copying is relatively undeveloped, as indicated by the contrasting decisions on The Spear (Herbert vs Ravenscroft) vs The Da Vinci Code (Baigent & Leigh vs Random House) - one novel found to be infringing the earlier literary work, one not, on very similar facts.

But in any case, with our gnoll situation the effective result is the same: no infringement.

 

[pemerton]

There's a long distance between taking-case-to-judgement (very risky) and sending out a breach-of-OGL notice, though. That they have not done the former may mean they either cannot identify a breach of the OGL, or are not bothered.

I wouldn't be especially shocked if they are not bothered - or, rather, take the view that the complaint is sufficiently speculative, and the adverse publicity sufficiently bad, that they err on the side of permission.

From WotC's point of view, after all, OSRIC has probably helped rather than hindered the marketing of their rerelease of the AD&D core books.

 

[S'mon]

I wouldn't be especially shocked if they are not bothered - or, rather, take the view that the complaint is sufficiently speculative, and the adverse publicity sufficiently bad, that they err on the side of permission.

From WotC's point of view, after all, OSRIC has probably helped rather than hindered the marketing of their rerelease of the AD&D core books.

OSRIC contributed considerably to the milieu in which re-releasing the core books seemed a good idea, I'd say.

If WoTC still sold pdfs, they would have made quite a lot of OSRIC-stimulated pdf sales over the past few years of 1e product, as opposed to merely encouraging ebay sales (just got a new 1e PHB last week*! ) and unauthorised downloads.

*A couple years ago, OSRIC got me back into thinking about 1e as a viable system again. Now I'm running an actual 1e AD&D PHB-DMG-MM campaign since December, and it's been going great.

 

[czak]

Stuart Marshall talks a little about OSRIC's strategy around jurisdiction, tables and formulas and the OGL in this post over on tenkar's tavern. I've linked to the most relevant one, but you can scroll up and down and see more.

Tenkar's Tavern: Is Wizards&#39 Latest Cease and Desist an Introduction to D&D 5E?

And here he mentions that he received a C&D letter when he published OSRIC.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011...howComment=1319402625582#c6765212698088258939


- Edit -
Didn't you UKers go all soft and europeany on contract law back in the late 70s with the Unfair Contract Terms, Sale of Goods, and Supply of Goods and Services acts? Maybe I am misrembering. I believe that's when our casebooks start eyeing UK cases with suspicion instead of touting Dennings.

 

[S'mon]

Didn't you UKers go all soft and europeany on contract law back in the late 70s with the Unfair Contract Terms, Sale of Goods, and Supply of Goods and Services acts? Maybe I am misrembering. I believe that's when our casebooks start eyeing UK cases with suspicion instead of touting Dennings.

Thanks for the links - OSRIC didn't get a formal C&D though AIR from discussions, it was a non-legal WoTC staffer saying something like "this can't be legal!", then it all went quiet.

Hence Stuart Marshall:
We were confident that OSRIC was perfectly lawful, but we weren't confident that WOTC would accept that. Now we are.
October 25, 2011 11:47 AM

Re UCTA & Europeanisation - that's nothing, you should see our EU-derived Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 - "an unfair term shall not be binding on the consumer"!

 

[tenkar]

czak - the comments to this blog post were probably the most educational of any post I've made

Stuart Marshall talks a little about OSRIC's strategy around jurisdiction, tables and formulas and the OGL in this post over on tenkar's tavern. I've linked to the most relevant one, but you can scroll up and down and see more.

Tenkar's Tavern: Is Wizards&#39 Latest Cease and Desist an Introduction to D&D 5E?

And here he mentions that he received a C&D letter when he published OSRIC.

The Other Side blog: More OSRIC Player's Guide woes


- Edit -
Didn't you UKers go all soft and europeany on contract law back in the late 70s with the Unfair Contract Terms, Sale of Goods, and Supply of Goods and Services acts? Maybe I am misrembering. I believe that's when our casebooks start eyeing UK cases with suspicion instead of touting Dennings.

 

[pemerton]

Didn't you UKers go all soft and europeany on contract law back in the late 70s with the Unfair Contract Terms, Sale of Goods, and Supply of Goods and Services acts? Maybe I am misrembering. I believe that's when our casebooks start eyeing UK cases with suspicion instead of touting Dennings.

czak, what jurisdiction are you in?