On Mon, 16 Jan 2023 23:14:12 +0000, James Catchpole - jlcatchpole at
googlemail.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance
Traveller:

>The question that has the Cepheus engine publishers worried is that if WOTC
>were to revoke OGL1.0a and not be challenged in court, then Mongoose could
>use that to say the Traveller SRD is no longer valid. This is something
>they have said they would previously like to do, but everyone has taken it
>as given that they can't. This might make Cepheus in its current form no
>longer viable as a set of rules for any future publication.

This is a key issue, and it's not clear what the legal status is. This is
also what I was referring to when I said that there were opinions by real
lawyers that WOTC may not be able to de-authorize OGL1.0a and the SRDs that
were covered by it.

That said, there is, as I indicated, case law that suggests that if I write
my Ish Kabibble Cluster setting with its own rules not cutpasted from the
SRD, but with identical results in practice, I can claim to be 'compatible
with Traveller' - and I probably can't be touched at all if I don't even
_mention_ Traveller, and claim "unofficial material for use with popular
2D6 space RPGs". But, again, I'M NOT A LAWYER, and if I was, NOT YOURS.

(That same case law also would seem to imply that you do NOT need the OGL
to _translate_ the SRD into a language that Mongoose has never released
Traveller in, and publish Traveller-compatible material (including core
rules) in that language - but if the country in question subscribes to the
Berne Convention, you'd still have the issues with derivative works,
trademark, and Trade Dress.)

(Intellectual Property law is complicated. Any explanation you and I can
understand is probably simplified to the point where the explanation is
"wrong". That doesn't mean that your _understanding_ necessarily is "wrong"
as well, just "incomplete".)

It's very likely that if it came before a judge, the result would depend in
large part on which side had more money to throw at lawyers - and there may
be IP lawyers who would take the case against WOTC on a pro bono or partial
pro bono basis, and I would expect to see a consortium of publishers of
materials based on the WOTC SRD pooling their legal talent and re$ources to
try to get the judge to tell WOTC what pointy object to sit on. And if that
consortium were to ask for crowdfunding, I have no doubt they'd get it.

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