In their typical fashion, WotC is making another duplicitous move with their "open" licensing. (They're registering trademarks on terms they've previously released under an open, irrevocable license.)

So are they clueless and incompetent, underhanded and evil, or all of the above?

I'm tired of dealing with intellectual property bullshit. I think copyright should last for 14 years from first publication, with the option to renew thereafter once every 14 years, up to a maximum of 95 years from first publication. This would neatly solve the problems with abandonware, orphan works, and other works whose rights are stuck in legal limbo.

I'm going with "all of the above."

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on Today at 01:43:12 PMIn their typical fashion, WotC is making another duplicitous move with their "open" licensing. (They're registering trademarks on terms they've previously released under an open, irrevocable license.)

So are they clueless and incompetent, underhanded and evil, or all of the above?

To be specific, they're trying to trademark "Deck of Many Things" and "Orb of Dragonkind". I think this was a screw-up, since they already released a product titled "Deck of Many Things" before this -- but "Deck of Many Things" and "Orb of Dragonkind" has been in the OGL release since the revised SRD in the early 2000s.

The thing is that trademark works differently from copyright. You can trademark even a simple word like "Apple" as long as it is used distinctively in a specific context. So they can still legally trademark a term that appears in a CC-BY work -- it just reduces confusion to remove it from the document. Even if WotC successfully got a trademark, other publishers can still use "Deck of Many Things" in the interior of a product -- it's just that those publishers couldn't use "Deck of Many Things" in the title or cover to identify the work.

That said, I'm not sure they can trademark "Deck of Many Things", since (for example) Hit Point Press already sells a product titled that.

To a certain point it comes to who has the bigger lawyers.

For instance, Apple was literally named for the Beatles record company, Apple. The record company was fine as long as Apple didn't get into the music business. Which of course they did and won in court because they had more expensive lawyers.

To be fair, they did settle with the music company. But they didn't have to.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on Today at 02:20:18 PMI'm tired of dealing with intellectual property bullshit. I think copyright should last for 14 years from first publication, with the option to renew thereafter once every 14 years, up to a maximum of 95 years from first publication. This would neatly solve the problems with abandonware, orphan works, and other works whose rights are stuck in legal limbo.

I would agree except the 95 mark. 28 years seems plenty. Authors/creators could still sell authorized versions or keep writing.

Quote from: JeremyR on Today at 03:41:45 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on Today at 02:20:18 PMI'm tired of dealing with intellectual property bullshit. I think copyright should last for 14 years from first publication, with the option to renew thereafter once every 14 years, up to a maximum of 95 years from first publication. This would neatly solve the problems with abandonware, orphan works, and other works whose rights are stuck in legal limbo.

I would agree except the 95 mark. 28 years seems plenty. Authors/creators could still sell authorized versions or keep writing.

They can also maintain trademarks too. Works for the Burroughs Estate. I too think 28 years max is plenty, but I don't imagine it being an easy sell to creators. The current AI debacle where companies like Meta are trying to dismantle copyright law has put all creators on edge.

In other words, WotC at long last as found a way around the OGL terms; trademark law.

I imagine the two things selected here don't actually mean anything, so much as WotC is testing fanbase reactions. The end-game is likely to start trademarking things in the OGL which third party developers are using, and then threaten them with legal action to tie them up or force them to shut down. In so many words, WotC doesn't think it can regain market dominance via product sales, so it intends to use its legal teams to forcibly thin competition.

This is probably the end of the OGL as a concept. 

Quote from: Fheredin on Today at 05:29:04 PMIn other words, WotC at long last as found a way around the OGL terms; trademark law.

I imagine the two things selected here don't actually mean anything, so much as WotC is testing fanbase reactions. The end-game is likely to start trademarking things in the OGL which third party developers are using, and then threaten them with legal action to tie them up or force them to shut down. In so many words, WotC doesn't think it can regain market dominance via product sales, so it intends to use its legal teams to forcibly thin competition.

This is probably the end of the OGL as a concept.

Trademark has to do with marketing, not the content of a work. In principle, I am in agreement with trademark as a perpetual ownership - because there are a lot of people out there who will try to trick customers into buying something while deceiving them about who they are buying from.

So someone shouldn't be able to sell their own "Apple" computer that customers think is coming from the Apple corporation.

I think copyright should be at most 28 years or so like it was originally.

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In the case of WotC, since the start of the OGL in 2000, they've reserved a handful of monsters as iconically "official" as opposed to open - like the beholder and mind flayer - and they trademarked these. So if a book has a beholder on the cover, it's an official D&D product.

Even though I don't like them in general, Wizards of the Coast has produced a lot of stuff for D&D. They should be entitled to trademarks and trade dress so that customers clearly know whether they're buying an official D&D product as opposed to one of the horde of retro-clones and similar products. If their content sucks compared to third-party material, customers should clearly know that too.

I have my doubts about the validity of "Deck of Many Things" as a trademark, but even if wrong, this seems like a minor expansion of an existing practice by two magic items.