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WotC Talks OGL... Again! Draft Coming Jan 20th With Feedback Survey; v1 De-Auth Still On
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 8906333" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>Exactly. They had no case and they knew they had no case because there wasn't any copyright being violated and CRPG producers were very careful to not step onto any of TSR's trademarks.</p><p></p><p>And TSR had a TON of trademarks. They trademarked everything they thought they could get away with. But you can't slap a trademark on everything and copyright only covers so much. So even if it made Gary Gygax really mad that other people were using TSR ideas without paying for them, there wasn't a whole lot they could do unless they started crossing that line into either trademark or copyright violations. (Which is why putting any kind of compatibility notice with D&D on your product was a big no-no that TSR actively sued over, and why Wizards created the d20 System Trademark to advertise compatibility, and why every 5e-compatible OGL product today puts something about "Compatible with the fifth edition of the world's biggest fantasy roleplaying game" on their cover instead of actually saying the name of it).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 8906333, member: 19857"] Exactly. They had no case and they knew they had no case because there wasn't any copyright being violated and CRPG producers were very careful to not step onto any of TSR's trademarks. And TSR had a TON of trademarks. They trademarked everything they thought they could get away with. But you can't slap a trademark on everything and copyright only covers so much. So even if it made Gary Gygax really mad that other people were using TSR ideas without paying for them, there wasn't a whole lot they could do unless they started crossing that line into either trademark or copyright violations. (Which is why putting any kind of compatibility notice with D&D on your product was a big no-no that TSR actively sued over, and why Wizards created the d20 System Trademark to advertise compatibility, and why every 5e-compatible OGL product today puts something about "Compatible with the fifth edition of the world's biggest fantasy roleplaying game" on their cover instead of actually saying the name of it). [/QUOTE]
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