<<You can only declare your original creationswhich are not derived from the SRD to be PI. The declaration has an ownership element to it - if you don't own it, you can't declare it.
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Other than via trademark, how does one own a name used in isolation from a description? Is there case law supporting the notion that a name, used with an entirely different character, would be protectable (under _copyright_ law) by the first person to originate the name?
In general, I thought you owned _characters_ who happened to have certain names, which were paired with a character description that you came up with.
I've never heard of a name being copyrighted when used in isolation from its description.
I thought that all untrademarked names were effectively public domain by their very nature.
"Bobby Lou Raddabanks" may be a unique name that nobody before me has ever written down on a piece of paper, but is it of sufficient length to be copyrightable unless it is associated with a specific character?
Perhaps, but I've never seen case law testing that principle.
So, that doesn't say the case law doesn't exist, but just that I've never heard of such a thing. Allowing for such protections would let people come up with huge laundry lists of names that other people could effectively not use, all without trademarking them or even attaching them to specific character descriptions.
My point? PI requires ownership, but I don't know that you ever "own" a character name under U.S. IP law except when you trademark it, or except when it is paired with a very specific character description. And even if it has protection when paired with a character description, once you license the description, it is unclear how much (if any) copyright protection now exists when pairing an untrademarked name with licensed text.
Lee
