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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1825805" data-attributes="member: 10201">On proper names: this may be a language-barrier thing. In English, "proper name" is a subset of "proper noun". Pretty much any capitalized name of a specific person/place/thing is gonna be a proper noun, and if that label is of a person, it's gonna be a proper name. There is little-to-no ambiguity in this matter: a person's name (in the real world) is definitely a "proper name". The only wiggle room you might have on this matter is (1) if they are using a pen name (and, even then, it'd probably be considered a proper name) or (2) if the OGC/PI declarations somehow designated themselves as only referring to the creative content of the book, not the credits, etc.  On "d20" and trademarks: "D20" isn't a trademark of WotC. Do a search at the USPTO. You'll find that they have registered a trademark on "D20 System". And even that, IMHO, is an invalid trademark--you're not supposed to be able to trademark generic descriptive terms, and i'm convinced that only USPTO ignorance of the RPG market let that one slide by. Nonetheless, trademarks are very specific. Even assuming the D20 System trademark is fully valid, it doesn't protect the two individual words (which are just common nouns) any more than Apple Computers has any claim over the term "apple". You can *claim* a trademark on anything you want--just stick a "TM" after it. But, if you haven't subjected it to the review process required to get it registered, it may or may not be valid, to be decided should it go to court. You also can't, generally, claim a trademark on something that is not uniquely yours--"D20" was used by enough people [who were not using the D20STL] prior to any claim of it as a WotC trademark, that i'd be amazed if any claim on it held up in court. And i'll gladly turn up at any court hearing on the matter with a stack of evidence on my side.</blockquote>

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