From: "Tim Dugger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [OGF-L] Who can declare Product Identity (ThirdParty Beneficiaries?)
> Also, just as a side note. Say smoebody uses Mongooses PI without > permission. Green Ronin, nor any other company except one, can > enforce the guy using Mongoose's PI to resolve the situation or take > it to court. Other companies can tell him he is in breach, but unless > he is in breach of their material, they cannot do anything to him. > > The one exception mentioned above is WotC, who owns the license and > can therefore yank it from anybody for any valid reason. Sorry if this has already been asked, but this list is getting almost impossible to follow at the moment. What you said, made me think of something that is similar but *not* the same as the situation that you just described. What I want to know is what is the situation if somebody uses Mongooses PI without permission and the book it comes from has *Green Ronin* in the section 15. I ask this because section 4 Grant and Consideration says: "In consideration for agreeing to use this Licence, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence with the exact terms of this Licence to Use, the Open Game Content." And section 1 (a) says "'Contributors' means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed Open Game Content;" So surely the licence is granted by all of the Contributors (Mongoose, Green Ronin, WotC and anyone else in the section 15) and the person using the licence is entering into a contract with all of these people. I don't see anything that says that Green Ronin is only allowed to sue for breach on the two lines that Mongoose took from them, so wouldn't that mean that Green Ronin would be able to sue anyone who breached the OGL in the *rest* of Mongoose's book as well? If the book had 20 companies in its section 15 would it not have 20 companies that could sue someone who was in breach of the OGL? Are not all the people in the section 15 equal partners in the licence of that product? Are they not all entitled to equal rights to sue over that particular copy of the licence? I know that people often say that you have to show some sort of damage or loss to have a right to sue, but suppose that Green Ronin argued that someone who damaged Mongoose could cause them to produce less OGC (or produce so called "crippled OGC" instead) and that if Mongoose was not producing as much OGC then Green Ronin would have less free content from them and would have to spend more money on development. Is that not a "loss" of sorts? Maybe that could be enough of a financial loss to have a pop at a law suit and yank the licence of the transgressor. *If* you can convince me that companies can not sue to protect the rest of a book that borrows their content, does that then go the other way. Does it mean that if Mongoose borrows Green Ronin's OGC and someone rips off 3 chapters of Mongooses book (including some stuff that would breach the licence like PI), Mongoose is forbidden to sue over the 1 chapter that originally came from Green Ronin. And *if* you can convince me that Mongoose is forbidden from protecting the third party written content of its books, what happens if they are using one of Clark Peterson's PI licences? Would Mongoose be forbidden from using the courts to enforce Clark's licence if someone steals his PI from their book? I don't think that would be fair. (Although I know that fair and legal are not always the same thing.) I think that those "if"s wouldn't happen and Mongoose *would* be able to sue over 100% of the material in their book *including* stuff they didn't write. However, as the licence doesn't seem to differentiate between the publisher and the other contributors I also think that anyone else in the section 15 of (including people who's content was not actually being used) could have an equal right to sue over breaches of the same book *including* the stuff *they* didn't write. Am I right or have I missed something? David Shepheard Webmaster Virtual Eclipse Science Fiction Role Playing Club http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/ http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/ _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
