In that case modify my statement thusly.
All content in greyed boxes in this book is designated Open content With the
exception of Italicized text within those boxes which is closed.
Then whenever you find a need to place closed content in a Stat Block, Italicize it.
You make a good point however, the terms Snakeman and Mongoose man are not
copyrightable, and they would be hard to trademark. The text describing them in
relation to the ip would however be copyrightable and would not be in the open
section.
Using the term snake or mongose man in an Open area would not be a risk legally since
you wouldn't be able to copyright those terms.
IF, you did manage to Trademark them, THEN, you could simply designate the use of
those terms in an STL similar to the D20 STL which defines various ip such as
monsters and spells.
A rule of thumb would be to simply watch how Wizards protects their property and
follow suit.
"Alec A. Burkhardt" wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, John of the Collective wrote:
>
> > A simple way to fix this would be to in the copyright section right after the
> > D20 and OGL licenses put in language such as this.
> >
> > All content in greyed boxes in this book is designated Open content. With the
> > exception, All the proper nouns detailed below are closed and copyright 2000 by
> > sonso games.
> >
> > Terms covered
> > Snakemen
> > Mongoosemen
> > .......
> >
> > Since the OGL doesn't define how to indicate closed content, simply make sure
> > that any content that is clossed is defined as such.
> >
> > Remember, for practical purposes, only proper nouns can be protected anyway.
>
> Unfortunately proper nouns cannot be copyrighted by themselves so your
> proposal would not provide the protection you are seeking. In order to
> protect a proper noun you need to be able to trademark it. Something that
> is more complicated that copyrighting and also probably impossible with
> the terms "snakemen" and "mongoosemen". I assume what people are
> concerned about protecting is 'their' version of such creatures, which
> would naturally require more than just a name to describe. The entire
> description would of course qualify for copyright protection.
>
> While personally I don't think just using the name of a creature in an
> OPEN section of the text would be sufficient to bring the entire
> description of the creature (assuming it was described in a CLOSED
> section) into the OPEN, I think the suggestion about describing any
> benefits in a generic way (+2 to hit mortal enemy as opposed to +2 to hit
> snakemen) is a simple way around this. Explaining who is a creature's
> mortal enemy would then be something covered in the CLOSED descriptions of
> the creature.
>
> alec
>
> -------------
> For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
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