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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8499721" data-attributes="member: 42582">It seems to me that both these things I've quoted are correct.The proprietary and hence contractual structure of physical books sales, and that of PDF/POD sales, are different.  With physical books, goods are sold by the publisher to the wholesaler/distributor to the retailer to the customer. In relation to any IP: none of the purchasers gains permission to copy or reproduce any copyright works (other than bits, like character sheets, that are expressly labelled with such permissions, or bits that are implicitly licensed as part of the play of the game - eg reproducing weapon tables on your PC sheet); and the wholesaler and retailer (typically) do not present themselves, and are not permitted to present themselves, as being affiliated with the publisher.But with PDFs/POID, DriveThru is being licensed to reproduce copyright works (electronic files and text) and to reproduce and further distribute those files under trademarks. The consumer, similarly, does not acquire a physical object (a book) that once belonged to the publisher. If downloading a PDF, they themselves reproduce a copyrighted file/text pursuant to a licence; if buying a POD book, they are buying something from DriveThru which it printed under licence from the holder of the copyright in the file/text.I think this is the underlying rationale of the TSR3 vs WotC lawsuit - that it is DriveThru, not WotC, that has been trading under the relevant trademarks; and that, in fact, DriveThru was not doing so under licence from WotC. I don't know if that's a plausible argument - my instinct is that it's not, but I don't know either the commercial or the legal details. I also don't know how that argument is reconciled with TSR3's claim that the trademarks are available for registration by it, but maybe they are going to argue that the trademarks have not distinguished DriveThru's good or services in the course of trade? Again, I'm not enough of an IP lawyer to try and conjecture these arguments.Maybe it's worth adding that legal arguments can be put together by a competent firm, and be coherent at a surface level, while ultimately being very weak. The firm ultimately  can't do any better than what its client's circumstances permit. And sometimes a client's circumstances are terrible, but they insist on going ahead with their claim.</blockquote>

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