RosenMcStern Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 The company tries to settle but the other party doesn't agree to anything reasonable. They want something crazy like being able to put the official D&D logo on their books without any royalties and no approvals. So you fight it. You end up spending years fighting it in court all the while you can do nothing with D&D that involves the words Armor Class. The company ends broke from paying laywer costs to fight this or it ends up with some crazy publisher putting your logo on stuff that may be no where near your level of quality. Oh, yes. I am perfectly aware of how all this works. I do not know if you have ever met him in person, but Jeff (lawstaff here), the person who takes care of the legal aspects of the licenses involving all of Issaries trademarks (HeroQuest, RuneQuest, Glorantha) has a really long experience in court cases related to IP in the US, and he has explained us a lot last year at the Eternal Convention, especially with regards to the policies involved in Issaries Trademarks. Basically, the real risk in this is that the expenses exceed your financial capability and you are forced to give up when you know right is on your side. There are, however, some moves that you can make in order to prevent such things to happen. The example you quoted is exactly one case in which Wizards failed to put such a strategy in place for one licensee out of several. European courts are slightly cheaper, but not exceedingly cheaper, so this technique works in EU courts as well. I have had, and won, several disputes in which my opponents counted on the fact that I would yield, whereas I did not, or where they gave up a procedure they might have won because of the costs (and stress). In some cases, I myself would have preferred to settle outside court, but I did not let the judicial expenses scare me when the other part refused to settle. It is all a matter of having a trustworthy legal counsellor and keeping costs under control, and then checking what your actual chances of winning a case are. Both in the US and in the EU. And before you ask whether I have an idea of how much going to court can cost in some cases: yes, I do. Quote Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RosenMcStern Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 It is all Open Content? In that case, if I were you, I would release it for Legend pronto (even if only a PDF), because there is every chance someone else might. I would also point out that Mongoose has, in the past, scooped up vast portions of OGC and re-published them as compilations. Not saying we _would_ for Merrie England (we have absolutely no plans to), but we could, and we have form What a pity! You would have done us a great deal of free advertising. The OGC edition contains only one of the six episodes of the campaign, so anyone buying a hypothetical "Legend edition" would have to buy the BRP edition to find out "Who killed the Old Jew" Actually, that could have turned out to be the best thing for D&D, ever. This is a good point. Even if official D&D had disappeared, someone could have made a D&D clone and everyone would have known that it was basically a D&D clone, and things would have continued from there. "Would", "if"? Man, this actually happened. Wizards wanted to shut down 3.x edition, but here enter the Paizo guys (and gals), and - lo and behold - Pathfinder is born. And please note that Pathfinder is a clone, not an OGL product. The defendant should have at least been reimbursed for costs. I'm guessing things work a little differently over there though. The risk with European courts is that you are reimbursed less than you spent. Here, it is the judge's call how much the winner gets back, and it happened to me to win a case and not get reimbursed. But in most cases "the bad guy" is the losing part, if you have the balls to come and see his bluff. Quote Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbcreighton Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 "Would", "if"? Man, this actually happened. Wizards wanted to shut down 3.x edition, but here enter the Paizo guys (and gals), and - lo and behold - Pathfinder is born. And please note that Pathfinder is a clone, not an OGL product. What makes you say that it is not an OGL product. It has a Reference document here: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ The reference document has been constantly updated as they have released new material for the game. It says on this page: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is released under the Open Game License, meaning the core rules that drive the Pathfinder RPG system are available to anyone to use for free under the terms of the OGL. This compendium of rules, charts, and tables contains all of the open rules in the system, and is provided for the use of the community of gamers and publishers working with the system. I realize it states that the PRD is not the official game, but neither were the WotC SRDs. Quote I use fantasygrounds.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbcreighton Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 What a pity! You would have done us a great deal of free advertising. The OGC edition contains only one of the six episodes of the campaign, so anyone buying a hypothetical "Legend edition" would have to buy the BRP edition to find out "Who killed the Old Jew" Just out of curiosity, would Alephtar consider publishing a Legend version of Merrie England ? If there really are that many copies of the Legend pdf being sold, and if there is an influx of new players ready to try it out, and they just might be looking for a setting to play it, it sounds promising. I realize that there might be some history behind the Mongoose - Alephtar relationship, but business is business. You mentioned earlier that every time you bet against open licensing in the past that you have lost. Are there any issues related to having an OGC Merrie England in circulation that could undercut your copyright on the currently published BRP version ? Sounds like a potential can of worms there. Quote I use fantasygrounds.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RosenMcStern Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Really? I read there was no reference to the OGL in Pathfinder, or at least that it is not deliberately labeled as a derivative of the D20 OGL. I did not check my copy of PF before posting (it is on another computer) so I may have been wrong. But then, also MRQ1 and Legend are OGL and they are not a derivative of D&D. Just out of curiosity, would Alephtar consider publishing a Legend version of Merrie England ? If there really are that many copies of the Legend pdf being sold, and if there is an influx of new players ready to try it out, and they just might be looking for a setting to play it, it sounds promising. I realize that there might be some history behind the Mongoose - Alephtar relationship, but business is business. You mentioned earlier that every time you bet against open licensing in the past that you have lost. Are there any issues related to having an OGC Merrie England in circulation that could undercut your copyright on the currently published BRP version ? Sounds like a potential can of worms there. There is nothing bad or mysterious in the Alephtar - Mongoose relationship. The worst point of it was when Mongoose Matt posted a memorable "Desperately Seeking RosenMcStern" message on the MGP boards and I replied at the best of my grumpiness. Hardly a matter for the UN security council. It is extremely likely that we will publish something with the Legend OGL in Italian, but the details of these are better left undisclosed for some more days. Is this enough to show there is no axe to grind, but just business decisions based on facts and evaluations? As for my preference for the GPL/OGL, it is not the only factor that makes up a decision. Alephtar's policy has been explained in detail one month ago. We have built enough momentum to be able to make our own policy, and, after evaluating the option of making our own (OGL) d100 system, we will go for the game system that allows for the broadest variety of platforms. It happens to be BRP, which is not open. But it is stable, accessible and third-party friendly enough to make me sleep comfortably. Quote Proud member of the Evil CompetitionTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmccoy1693 Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 (edited) Really? I read there was no reference to the OGL in Pathfinder, or at least that it is not deliberately labeled as a derivative of the D20 OGL. Oh, no. It is definitely OGL. Everyone of their books references the d20SRD. I'm a Pathfinder Compatible Publisher. So do all of mine. Edited January 27, 2012 by dmccoy1693 Quote Dale McCoy Jon Brazer Enterprises Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prime Evil Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 It is all Open Content? In that case, if I were you, I would release it for Legend pronto (even if only a PDF), because there is every chance someone else might. I would also point out that Mongoose has, in the past, scooped up vast portions of OGC and re-published them as compilations. Not saying we _would_ for Merrie England (we have absolutely no plans to), but we could, and we have form You have form for a great many things, Matt. In fact, it might be faster to list the sins that you haven't committed yet! I've recently incorporated a a few bits and pieces from the MRQ I version of Merrie England into my homebrew variant of Legend - there's some good material in that book. If it's any consolation, I recently bought the BRP version and think that it's even better than the original. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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