Robert Fisher

Just thinking out loud

Intellectual property & role playing games

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work in progress

  • IANAL
  • Never wrong to ask
  • Copyright
    • Expression, not mechanics
    • Expression includes art & layout
  • Trademarks
    • Must defend
  • Patents
    • Any?
  • The OGL & d20L

Rules of thumb: The lawsuit you heard about probably...

  • ...wasn't a lawsuit at all
  • ...if it was a lawsuit, was settled out of court
  • ...was about a minor technical issue instead of what you heard it was about

TSR & Saul Zaentz Company

(SZC has controls certain rights for the Tolkien estate. (Disagreements between them?) SZC made TSR remove some words--balrog, ent, hobbit--from original D&D. Also stopped a TSR five armies wargame.)

(Then there's the warriors of mars thing too...)

JG & GDW & TSR

For a time Judge's Guild had licenses to produce products for Traveller, D&D, & AD&D.

TSR pulled the license once they realized that people actually would buy modules & they were starting to sell their own.

TSR v. Chaosium

(Need to research again. TSR (Gygax) got Moorcock's permission to put the Melnibonean mythos in D&DG. The Cthulhu mythos seemed to be public domain. TSR (Gygax) agreed to put a thanks to Chaosium in D&DG for the Melnibonean & Cthulhu mythoi. TSR (Blume) then decided they didn't want a competitors name to appear in their product, & pulled the thanks & the mythoi. Moorcock has said that Chaosium has been a overstepped their rights in defending their Melnibone license.)

(What about the OD&D supplement?)

TSR v. Mayfair

TSR claimed trademark infringement because Mayfair put a statement on its Role Aids products that stated that they were compatible with AD&D. TSR & Mayfair signed an agreement in 1984—without going to court—on Mayfair's use of TSR's trademarks.

TSR then sued Mayfair complaining that they'd violated the agreement. The court agreed that Mayfair had violated some terms of the agreement & awarded damages. The agreement remained in force, however.

TSR eventually did buy the rights to the Role Aids line from Mayfair.

The actual judge's opinion?

TSR v. GDW

TSR claimed (13 May 1992?) that Dangerous Dimensions, the name of Gygax's game to be published by GDW, infringed on TSR's Dungeons & Dragons trademark. (They thought the abbreviation “DD” would be too similar to “D&D”.) GDW responded by changing the name to Dangerous Journeys.

TSR sued GDW claiming Dangerous Journeys infringed on TSR's AD&D copyright. (Is this correct?) The case was settled out of court. TSR ended up acquiring the rights to DJ. (Like many old TSR products, it is available in PDF.)

Loren Wiseman's FAQ

Kenzer

(I need to do some research on this one again. What I recall (likely wrong): WotC published the Dragon Magazine archive on CD-ROM. They failed to get permission to reprint the KotDT comics. Kenzer used this as leverage to get the license to produce Hackmaster. The license requires a certain amount of parody in all Hackmaster products.)

SJG v. FBI

(FBI thought SJG employee was a black hat. They raided the SJG offices & confiscated nigh everything. SJG put "was seized by the FBI" promo text on the cover of GURPS Cyberpunk. SJG eventually won the suit.)

last updated 1 year ago #