[MUD-Dev] Re: Combat

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 10:19 AM 4/27/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>[Jon L:]
>:D&D/AD&D
>:Cyberpunk 2000 
>:Rolemaster
>
>Can you use any of those without getting into copyright problems? I thought

Point of fact.  Copyright covers IMPLEMENTATIONS not IDEAS. The Copyright
offcie themselves state quite clearly in their own materails that game
mechanics are NOT copyrightable. The stement is that once a game is
publishedd anyopne is free to publish a game with substantially simialr
game mechanics.


>I had seen posts in the newsgroups about TSR getting upset with MUD people

Yep. and TSr has NEVEr won ANY clegal case they brought to court ( a law
school freidn of mine pulled the decisions of LEXIS for me awhiel back.)
TSR howveer DID get ALOt of mileage out of threatening people who did not
have lawyers of their own with bogus legal action.  The real issue on any
of these is not if you can use them (you can so long as you do not copy the
actual verbage directly out of their books) but can you handle going to
court to prove it if they file bogus suits.

A side note is that TSR is abotu dead.  Wizards of the Coast and TSR have
announced that WotC has signed a letter of intent to buy TSR.  Its stilk
lto early to tell wehat the repercussiosn will be, but past WotC behavior
can lead us to hope this whole thing will be a non-issue soon enough.


PROPER DISCALIMER: I am not a lawyer and thsi shoudl not be talken as legal
advice.

I HAVE however researched this particualr issue to death.

Jeff Kesselman