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<blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8912199" data-attributes="member: 2525">I really wish people would stop making this legal claim. The issue is not as simple as that. There is a great deal of nuance to it. You cannot copyright an individual rule, but if a large bundle of rules is copied by someone it can in fact run afoul of copyright/trade dress. It's really a somewhat complex area and is not subject to a single legal declaration like you're making.By releasing the core rules to the CC, it does in fact help out third parties. A somewhat fuzzy line as to when a company would have cross into violating their trade dress is answered cleanly by it being in the CC. There is value to that certainty for a company.This part is inaccurate. Some game mechanics can be patented and methods of accounting law is not where you'd look for that. If game mechanics are unique useful and nonobvious it's open to some patent protection. Hasbro owns patents on several games including their mechanics, like Monopoly. Twister is another game where the mechanics are protected by patent.Understood. It might be wiser to maybe not talk with declarations of certainty about what the law is then. Intellectual Property law is an entire field, people sue each other all the time with legitimate opposing views on how that field of law works for a given set of facts, and it's often not as simple as &quot;It's this way and we know for sure it's this way!&quot;One last twist here - D&amp;D is a game played across the world and not just in the U.S. and the laws regarding Intellectual Property nuance vary greatly from nation to nation. Even if you think you have a handle on the law in one nation, you likely don't for another. Putting stuff in the CC tends to allay rational fears across a large number of national IP laws.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mistwell, post: 8912199, member: 2525"] I really wish people would stop making this legal claim. The issue is not as simple as that. There is a great deal of nuance to it. You cannot copyright an individual rule, but if a large bundle of rules is copied by someone it can in fact run afoul of copyright/trade dress. It's really a somewhat complex area and is not subject to a single legal declaration like you're making. By releasing the core rules to the CC, it does in fact help out third parties. A somewhat fuzzy line as to when a company would have cross into violating their trade dress is answered cleanly by it being in the CC. There is value to that certainty for a company. This part is inaccurate. Some game mechanics can be patented and methods of accounting law is not where you'd look for that. If game mechanics are unique useful and nonobvious it's open to some patent protection. Hasbro owns patents on several games including their mechanics, like Monopoly. Twister is another game where the mechanics are protected by patent. Understood. It might be wiser to maybe not talk with declarations of certainty about what the law is then. Intellectual Property law is an entire field, people sue each other all the time with legitimate opposing views on how that field of law works for a given set of facts, and it's often not as simple as "It's this way and we know for sure it's this way!" One last twist here - D&D is a game played across the world and not just in the U.S. and the laws regarding Intellectual Property nuance vary greatly from nation to nation. Even if you think you have a handle on the law in one nation, you likely don't for another. Putting stuff in the CC tends to allay rational fears across a large number of national IP laws. [/QUOTE]

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