Chris Helton wrote:
My god....yes! If you violate the definitions of
Product Identity under the OGL then you are violating
copyright and trademark lawas too. You can't use the
IP (intellectual property) that doesn't belong to you.
Not necessarily. The PI definition allows things to be identified as PI that cannot be subject to copyright or trademark protection. Frex, i can declare "the stance of the characters in the cover illustration" as PI. You almost certainly can't trademark a stance, on its own. You certainly can't copyright it. So, if i drew a completely different character in the same stance, i might be in a circumstance where i'm violating the terms of the license, because the stance is PI, but, absent the WotC OGL, i wouldn't be in violation of any IP laws.
In a less-esoteric vein, i could PI a musical work too short to meet the current [ridiculously-short] standards for copyrighting music. Again, reusing that bit would, absent the WotC OGL, be perfectly legal. There're plenty of ways to violate the PI clauses of the WotC OGL without even getting close to violating conventional IP laws.
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