>From: Ole Sebastian Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>At 15:49 18.06.2000 PDT, Faust wrote:
> >Throughout all of the OGL/D20 discussion, WotC has consistently and
> >emphaticaly (and reasonably) maintained that they must act to maintian
>their
> >trademarks, unless the use is consistent with their online publishing
>policy
> >(which allows you to make "netbooks" and give them away for free -but NOT
> >publish anything and sell it). This means WotC will allow you to write
>the
> >books and give them away, but will institute legal action against you if
>you
> >use their trademarks in a work that you are selling.
>
>Selling as in gaining profits, or selling as in to take charge for the
>medium (book or CD)? (Would GFDL be "not selling"?)
Selling as in asking for money in return for the receipt of...
>Besides, are these USA-spesific of INTERNATIONAL advice? Any country that
>has signed the Bern treaty (or what it is called) has to treat an
>international copyrightholder at a certain level, and never worse than
>national copyrightholders.
WotC is an integral part of Hasbro - a multinational corporation - and if
they do not actively act to protect those trademarks, they risk losing them.
More specifically, if they let people "get away with" selling material
that violates the trademark then it can later be argued in court that they
failed to protect them, and therefore lost them.
>I wonder how WotC handles copyright and Trademarks in a country where they
>don't have an office. Say I publish a netbook on my norwegian site, what
>then?
If it's a netbook, and you don't charge for it, they are already allowing it
under the terms of their online publishing policy. Don;t try to charge for
it, though.
>(If somebody interpretes this last question as someting like "is it
>easy to get away with?", I must say that was not the intetion. I humbly
>want to understand these things better so that I DO NOT do anything bad.)
Hope this helps!
Faust
See the NEW and IMPROVED OGL FAQ <unofficial> at:
http://www.earth1066.com/D20FAQ.htm
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