The following are ACTUAL cases brought against a major US bookseller (I am friends with the defending lawyer)...
A person with epilepsy sued the chain because the person had a seizure, fell down and smacked their head on a bookcase.
A person was walking through the flower bed outside one of the stores, tripped over the fence (the one designed to keep people from walking through the flower bed) and fell on a landscaping lamp, burning their hand. The person sued them.
A person taking medication that made them light headed lost their balance on the stairs and fell down them and sued the chain for it.
.....the moral? Just three more reasons to be sure you don't get in trouble for the things you can prevent (ie use a lawyer, careful review of everything you publish, etc.) since there are already scores of people ready to sue you for everything else that isn't your fault.
At 08:29 AM 4/24/2001 -0400, you wrote:
These pages also prove that people will sue for just about anything, but the most enlightening aspects of those cases are the verdicts.
As a side note. This struck me as interesting:
"A compilation is defined in s101. It is the assembly of previously existing materials, as in a directory or anthology. The copyrightability of the underlying material is a seperate issue from the copyrightability of the compilation.
Compilations only protected by thin copyright. Slight variations on compilation by later authors may be enough to avoid infringement. "
This "dictionary effect" intrigues me. I'm interested (in a car crash sort of way) in seeing what would happen to a scholarly compilation of all the monsters (including stats) that are used in roleplaying games. I wonder if they could publish their monster dictionary, quote from open and non-open content alike and not be required to use the OGL.
Maggie
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