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<blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 4951522" data-attributes="member: 447">&quot;Game Master&quot; and &quot;GM&quot; are, in all likelihood, safe to use in your rules text.Monster names pulled from folklore and myth are, in all likelihood, safe.On the topic of monsters, though, my advice (FWIW here on the Internet) is to be careful that your kobold, for example, is drawn more from public domain sources and less from the D&amp;D kobold. (If it's a puny dog-like or reptilian humanoid, there's a risk of its being identified more with AD&amp;D or D&amp;D and thus a potential copyright infringement, though it's true that several other RPGs and CRPGs use kobolds in this way without any apparent trouble.) This bit is more of a copyright issue than it is a trademark issue, because it doesn't relate to naming or &quot;badging&quot; products (or services), but rather to the &quot;story&quot; behind the names.It sounds like you may be mixing up copyrights and trademarks. It's generally not possible to copyright single words or short &quot;naming&quot; phrases -- they are, on the whole, uncopyrightable (yep, it's a word). Copyright protection is available only for &quot;complete works of authorship.&quot; (Of course, you don't have to copy a whole work to infringe upon someone's copyright.)Conversely, any word or short &quot;naming&quot; phrase (in addition to, for example, colors, abstract sequences of letters and/or numbers, and bits of music) can be claimed as a trademark -- though the very weakest trademarks (ones which the courts will typically decline to protect and the US PTO may even decline to register) are words that actually name the product or service the words are being used to identify. Thus, &quot;Apple&quot; brand computers (strong) versus &quot;Apple&quot; brand apples (weak).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Marius Delphus, post: 4951522, member: 447"] "Game Master" and "GM" are, in all likelihood, safe to use in your rules text. Monster names pulled from folklore and myth are, in all likelihood, safe. On the topic of monsters, though, my advice (FWIW here on the Internet) is to be careful that your kobold, for example, is drawn more from public domain sources and less from the D&D kobold. (If it's a puny dog-like or reptilian humanoid, there's a risk of its being identified more with AD&D or D&D and thus a potential copyright infringement, though it's true that several other RPGs and CRPGs use kobolds in this way without any apparent trouble.) This bit is more of a copyright issue than it is a trademark issue, because it doesn't relate to naming or "badging" products (or services), but rather to the "story" behind the names. It sounds like you may be mixing up copyrights and trademarks. It's generally not possible to copyright single words or short "naming" phrases -- they are, on the whole, uncopyrightable (yep, it's a word). Copyright protection is available only for "complete works of authorship." (Of course, you don't have to copy a whole work to infringe upon someone's copyright.) Conversely, any word or short "naming" phrase (in addition to, for example, colors, abstract sequences of letters and/or numbers, and bits of music) can be claimed as a trademark -- though the very weakest trademarks (ones which the courts will typically decline to protect and the US PTO may even decline to register) are words that actually name the product or service the words are being used to identify. Thus, "Apple" brand computers (strong) versus "Apple" brand apples (weak). [/QUOTE]

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