I began relating to people offline the things we're learning about 4E this weekend. Every time I described a power, the person I was talking to responded with, "Oh, that's Ability X in World of Warcraft." So now I'm wondering if all the similarities will lead to a lawsuit by Blizzard against WotC over 4E.

Any thoughts?

In a world where such a lawsuit could occur [with any reasonable hope of success] there would have been one going the otherway already.

1) What blakkie said (he's like a stoped clock; this time he happens to be right. )
2) Unless it was excruciatingly conspicuously like some copyrighted material, probably not.

Quote from: jeff37923Any thoughts?

I think it's time for the WotC designers to either delete WoW from their computers and, uh, play role-playing games or to send their resumes to Blizzard if that's what they really want to be working on.

I agree.  I already play WoW, and if I wanted a WoW rpg I would go get the Warcraft RPG.

This all started in 3e though... Knight anyone?

Quote from: jeff37923I began relating to people offline the things we're learning about 4E this weekend. Every time I described a power, the person I was talking to responded with, "Oh, that's Ability X in World of Warcraft." So now I'm wondering if all the similarities will lead to a lawsuit by Blizzard against WotC over 4E.

Any thoughts?

There is no base for it. Blizzard could only sue Wizards of the Coast if Wizards used improperly the Warcraft trademark, not the ideas behind it. Otherwise, Chaosium would sue Mongoose for RuneQuest (almost exactly the same system as BRP). Of course, being right is no guarantee that you will win a judgement.

You can't copyright game mechanics.  You can copyright the names you use in the text though -- which I think is  one of the reasons for all the power names in 4e.

Quote from: StuartYou can't copyright game mechanics.  You can copyright the names you use in the text though -- which I think is  one of the reasons for all the power names in 4e.

No you can't.

You can trademark the names you give these things, and you own the copyright to your description of what those things do. If someone rewrote the description but kept the power name, you could not sue them for a copyright violation, but you could sue them for a trademark violation if you had trademarked the names.

Copyright is, in many ways, the weakest form of intellectual property. It prevents people from copying your shit and selling it without your permission, and that's about it. (Of course, "weak" is a relative term here - see all the folks who have been sued for pirating music on the Internet.) Trademarks and patents, now they're the really juicy things.

So far as I am aware, Wizards have not swiped any of Blizzard's trademarks, nor have they taken any of their copyrighted material. I'd be hard-pressed to see what copyrighted material of Blizzard's Wizards could usefully use in the first place, beyond stealing power descriptions from the game manuals, and why in God's name would they do that when they have perfectly adequate writers of their own?

Quote from: WarthurSo far as I am aware, Wizards have not swiped any of Blizzard's trademarks, nor have they taken any of their copyrighted material.

No, they're just engaging in that bland state of affairs where corporate businesses will only produce what's already been proven to sell. One company copies the proven product of another, and the other copies the one, and so forth, back and forth.

!i!

Warthur, there is however a concept in copyright called "derivative works", by which you can claim infringement even if something isn't a word-for-word copy. The full application of the rule is beyond my ken. I do know it can be applied to translation of a work to another medium (thus e.g. Nosferatu, the early silent vampire movie, infringed on Dracula, the novel, even though the character names were different, because the story was almost the same in outline). It can also apply to unauthorized sequels, as with the sequels to The Magnificent Seven, which I believe were ruled as infringing on the rights of Kurosawa, who'd only allowed the use of the story & characters of The Seven Samurai for the original film. So you can see some outline of a possibility of the case that Blizzard could make, but I doubt it would hold up unless the totality of similarities was strongly parallel.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that game mechanics can be patented, e.g. WotC did this with Magic, so in principle the idea of a suit is plausible but the particulars probably don't line up.

Why wouldn't WOTC sue WoW, given D&D invented fantasy gaming (cast of characters, monsters, spells, equipment, classes, levels) as we know it?

Well, we know why. Besides, in a world where Scrabble can't sue Scrabulous all bets are off.

Thankfully, copyright as anti-plagiarism tool is still working reasonably well in literature and academic writing.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThankfully, copyright as anti-plagiarism tool is still working reasonably well in literature and academic writing.

ORLY?

So I might get money for the stuff one of my profs put into a book, that was exactly my term paper from some years ago? I got an A, he got money and he wrote a fucking textbook. MY work is in a fucking university level textbook, students learn from it, and nobody will ever believe me. I can´t even put it on the resume.

No, Pierce, without a PhD, nobody believes you. Us academic foot soldiers with our Masters and Diploms, we are fair game for the leacherous and lazy scumbags that sometimes manage to get tenured.

Blizzard Entertainment already stole greatly from Games Workshop in creating their Warcraft and Starcraft franchises, stealing respectively from Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.  Furthermore, the Diablo franchise is just the D&D game of previous editions reduced to its most absurd (and commonly believed to be played) level.  That WOTC now steals from World of Warcraft is both irony and pathetic in a manner that I find pitiable.  However, none of this is actionable in terms of copyright violation, and I doubt that anything in terms of trademarks or trade dress is actionable either.

Let it be remembered that Chris Metzen, one of the gurus and officers that runs the Warcraft (and thus World of Warcraft) end of the business, is a big D&D geek and has some affection for Warhammer.  Likewise many folks at WOTC are big WOWheads, so influences in both directions are not unusual.  What is unusual is the wholesale aping of one by another, and that is the case here; it may be legal, but that doesn't mean that it's good business or that it's moral to do so- or that it's good game design.

Given that WoW even goes so far as stealing the actual names of spells and abilities from D&D, I think they'd get countersued in a hurry if they tried something like that.  

Besides, the Blizzard guys are all massive D&D nerds, so they're likely to be flattered more than anything, and while normally that might be irrelevant, they hold such massive clout with the new merger company that they basically get whatever the fuck they want.

Quote from: SettembriniORLY?

So I might get money for the stuff one of my profs put into a book, that was exactly my term paper from some years ago? I got an A, he got money and he wrote a fucking textbook. MY work is in a fucking university level textbook, students learn from it, and nobody will ever believe me. I can´t even put it on the resume.

No, Pierce, without a PhD, nobody believes you. Us academic foot soldiers with our Masters and Diploms, we are fair game for the leacherous and lazy scumbags that sometimes manage to get tenured.

Depends, depends...

The more teamwork/slavery-oriented the discipline, the more that kind of shit tends to happen. I.e., anything involving lab settings, social and natural sciences, econ. Humanities, not so much. IME.

I know a Harvard professor who was, not fired outright, but made to leave his job after he gave a talk at an international conference and a student stood up and told the audience he'd ripped him off.

Then again, I know an undergraduate who got plagiarized by a professor who just got tenure in the Ivy League and who's too scared to speak out. The thing is, she's wrong--nothing would happen to her, whereas the professor would be in deep shit indeed.

In some cases, a Ph.D. does give you the clout you need, but in others you don't need it.

Re. money: What happened to you is infuriating, but if it's any help a textbook doesn't make anyone rich. The real damage in plagiarism is the unacknowledged credentials.