I will be buying this product.

Quote from: Spike;219744Regarding the Points of Light and trademarking: given that this was a popular term bandied about by big name politicians quite a few years ago, it is entirely in the public domain by now. It's be like trying to trademark... I dunno... the term 'Anime'.

Uh... trademarks are at least partially contextual. Trademarking the term "points of light" with respect to a game has nothing to do with whether a bunch of politicians used it with respect to politics, any more than trademarking the name "Monopoly" has anything to do with the usage of the word by economists.

Warthur, you are somehow implying that, for example, if I were to release a game called 'Heresy', the existance of the Dark Heresy RPG would give Black Industries license to sue me for trademark infringement, and simultaniously implying both MTV and Todd Mcfarlane were in the right to sue White Wolf and Palladium.

I'm not a lawyer, certainly, but you need more context than 'gaming product' to trademark a public domain term.  If I were a lawyer I'd be tossing off the latin, but my memory isn't quite that good.

By all means, however, if you are a lawyer, lay out your case that WOTC could, in fact, trademark a term that was already in the public domain and enforce that by any means other than economic dominance (spending competitors into bankruptcy in the courts).  I'm willing to entertain that I'm way off base, but I haven't seen any evidence that I am here.

Heck, if you AREN"T a lawyer, lay out your case. I'm not picky.

And I KNOW IP laws have gotten stricter, not looser in the last few decades...

Quote from: Spike;219899Warthur, you are somehow implying that, for example, if I were to release a game called 'Heresy', the existance of the Dark Heresy RPG would give Black Industries license to sue me for trademark infringement, and simultaniously implying both MTV and Todd Mcfarlane were in the right to sue White Wolf and Palladium.

Well, if your game happened to be called Heresy - or perhaps Dark Heresy or Black Heresy or Night Heresy or something like that - and happened to be set in a grim far future in a totalitarian human empire that is threatened from without and within by ultimate cosmic chaos, damn right you'd get sued.

QuoteI'm not a lawyer, certainly, but you need more context than 'gaming product' to trademark a public domain term.  If I were a lawyer I'd be tossing off the latin, but my memory isn't quite that good.

Yes, but in this case we are talking about a gaming product which is transparently intended to be used for fantasy RPGs along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons, so the similarity is just a little closer.

Also, rewind a little. You argued that "Points of Light" is a public domain term, on the basis that it was used by a bunch of politicians in an utterly different context and therefore Wizards can't trademark it. I pointed out that by that logic "Monopoly" is a public domain term, because it was used by a bunch of economists in utterly different contexts, and therefore it couldn't be trademarked as the name of a family boardgame. In the same way, Wizards of the Coast could totally trademark "Points of Light" in relation to fantasy roleplaying games.

So far as I'm aware, they haven't. And it would be pissy of them to sue over Points of Light - and not only pissy, just plain stupid, since Points of Light is not being put out under the GSL, does not bear the Dungeons & Dragons name, and doesn't contain any system information, so establishing that the publishers are "passing off" would be difficult. Frankly, suing over it would be expensive and get Wizards very, very little in return, and they'd be dumb to spend money that could be better used elsewhere.

So, I agree with you that there's little danger of Wizards suing over this, but "Points of Light" can totally be trademarked.

I think we're fighting over a piffle here, Warthur.  I agree that had my theoretical game called 'Heresy' been called Dark Heresy, or had been an obvious pastiche of the 40k property...

... but we weren't talking about Dark Heresy, just 'Heresy' with no other context.

 

Point of fact there are copyrighted (not trademarked) songs, for example that share the same name, but not the same content. Ditto movies.  Points of Light wasn't Trademarked, and given it is at best a 'marketing concept' rather than an explicit 'game term'... as I understand it... it would have been prohibitive to trademark it anyway.

But here is the real kicker: I can write a game all about the grim dark future where there is only war, stealling concepts left and right from 40k all day long as long as I don't actually touch their trademarks. Now if I call it something like Black Heresy and use a lot of iconic-but-not-quite images, then there is a branch of trademark law that I can be sued under, not as clear cut as 'yes I'm wrong'. But if I don't call it 'Black Heresy' and I don't market it as 40k, then I can steal all the concepts I want, just not the exact expression of them.

On the other hand, if "Black Heresy" is a clear parody, the law is actually on my side, as Parody is a protected form of expression in IP law.

The simple version of the law concerning trademark and trade dress basically means that while competition is encouraged; pretending that you are somebody else product is not. I.e. if trying to compete with Prada shoes you can make a competing that tries to CONFUSE the customer as to which brand she is buying. I don't think anybody is going to be confusing PoL for any the released or announced Wizards products. More than the title the product itself doesn't look like a Wizard's product. That pretty much all that need to keep out of trouble.