<<>attached to, everything. PI is excepted from this requirement.
No, that's just wrong. Only that which is declared open is open. PI is
always closed, whether it's inside a declared open area or not.
>>
Read what I said again. The license says, effectively: "OGC means the entire work this license covers except the parts that are declared as product identity." The whole work the license attached is supposed to be OGC except the parts you declare to be PI. Since the parts that aren't PI are to be OGC (per the definition of OGC), you would then "clearly define" what is OGC.
I never said _anything_ about PI being open or closed because it was outside, inside, in front of, behind, or next to OGC. I said the parts of the work that are PI are "excepted" from the scope of the definition of OGC (which is the whole work the license is applied to minus the PI).
<<> It depends on what standards of
>"ownership" are required by the OGL.
There are none>>
And therein lies the problem. It doesn't say: "the PI list applies to things that can be patented, trademarked, or copyrighted." Since it includes things like poses, which cannot be patented, trademarked, or copyrighted (only a particular character in a particular pose, or a particular sketch of a pose), one wonders what standard of ownership is required to PI things.
Either the OGL was intended to be limited to things that can be trademarked, copyrighted, and patented, and there are a few stray things on the PI list that shouldn't be there, or the ownership requirement under the OGL is a horse of another color, a horse whose color the attorneys who drafted the license forgot to tell us about. Or, I'm just wrong and themes, poses, and other things that don't look like "ownable" commodities are, in fact, in some back corner of the law, ownable.
And thus the question as to whether one can PI the ideas and language associated with a rule. If you can own it, you can PI it if its on that list, and "language" and "ideas" are pretty darn broad.
Re: rules derived from the SRD, they, like all other content to which the license is applied to follow a principle: "Open Game Content" means any work covered by this License, but specifically excludes Product Identity.
If you own the stuff you are declaring as Product Identity you can PI it if it is also eligible to be declared as PI.
If you come up with a derivative rule, then provided that you can divide the rule up into the parts that are directly mentioning concepts from the SRD and your new concepts, you could potentially lock down your new stuff. That it is derivative is irrelevant. The law frequently looks at derivative works and puts them through a sifter to sift out things into 3 categories:
a) stuff the original guy 100% owns
b) stuff that's thoroughly mixed and that you either co-own or that the other guy owns entirely (depending on the situation)
c) any value added portions that you own entirely
If the licensing agreement is simple and doesn't talk about the resulting copyright in the derivative work, you'll end up with some or all of these 3 categories. Anything that falls into category c, that can be discretely identified would be eligible for PI. But again, there's that nasty "ownership" thing again, and who knows what it takes to own anything under the OGL, since "themes" and "poses" can be PI'd, and I'd like to see somebody point out the last time somebody had a patent, a trademark, or a copyright on a pose. Even if such a thing existed and were valid, I'd happily be wrong just to inform myself about such a quirk of the law.
I think the interesting point here in this thread is just as much as the theory behind what can be declared as PI, is that Green Ronin again has stepped up to the plate and took (apparently) a different view on PI than some other folks in the industry. I have zero problem with that. I just think stuff like that and Monte Cook's "gold" PI are notable because they are proof positive that _not_ all the major OGL publishers agree on what PI is and what it can do.
Lee
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