At 7:33 -0800 2/18/03, Michael Cortez wrote:
In all cases, existing products, products in development, print and e-book products, WotC is requesting that you contact them for special permission to use the Monsters that have been removed.I'm not at all surprised that WotC wants control over those monsters--why else remove them from teh SRD? The question is, does their request have the weight of law behind it? That is, is there any legal reason (besides "Hasbro has more money") that simply the names of the creatures can't be used? I certainly think you're treading dangerous ground to use any of their stats or descriptions, and especially their visual likenesses. But, is there any legal reason why a simple reference like "In this cavern lives a beholder." is illegal? It looks to me like, *unless* they are claiming beholder as a trademark, you are clear of the D20STL, the WotC OGL, and standard copyright and trademark law. And, on the trademark issue, i realize you don't have to register a trademark, but i thought that you had to make reasonable efforts to defend it, nonetheless. Such as claiming the trademark in published works. So, given that beholder (and the rest of the monsters in question) have never been identified as trademarks in 25+ years, wouldn't Hasbro be SOL on claiming them now? I'm not just talking inconsistently identified, but not at all (AFAIK).
To quote Firefly, "explain it to me in captain-dummy talk".
--
woodelf <*>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/
"Sorry, but I'm an old-fashioned gal. I was raised to believe that men
dig up the corpses, and women have the babies." --Buffy
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
