From: Dominic Mooney [dom@cybergoths.u-net.com] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 5:53 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Cetaceans At 18:29 -0600 1/1/01, Justin Bacon wrote: >And, furthermore, he doesn't appear to have a trademark on that term >at all. He >does not claim it as a trademark on his webpage. It is not claimed >as a trademark >in any of his books. Nor does the USPTO show him as having a >registered claim to >the term. You can either register a trademark or just assert it in published material. Registering costs more. Dom *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Dominic Mooney [dom@cybergoths.u-net.com] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 4:44 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Cetaceans At 18:21 +0000 1/1/01, David Chart wrote: >You're wrong. You *might* need his permission to actually call the >book that, but you might not. Brin doesn't write RPGs, so the >chances of trademark confusion are reduced. Copyright is completely >irrelevant here. Also, it is not normal practice in book publishing >to trademark everything in sight, and you cannot trademark a >correctly spelled word (hence all the funky mis-spellings in product >names), so there's unlikely to be any problem at all. (Good example: >Traveller. As I type, that is not a trademark, as it is the standard >UK English spelling. In the US, it is a trademark of, IIRC, Far >Future Enterprises. A few years back a Fighting Fantasy book called >"Starship Traveller" was published in the UK. GDW sent a >cease-and-desist letter. The response was the relevant page from an >English dictionary.) I know that SJG haven't ruled out a re-release of GURPS Uplift in the future (it's one of the more requested titles). Looking at the front page of the book it states: 'Uplift is trademark of David Brin used under license'. I think you may well get a _cease and desist_ on using the title 'uplift' but not on the ideas. Brin didn't stop GDW / DGP using the phrase uplift in the Solomani and other supplements for Traveller. >Very unlikely indeed. Brin almost certainly has an agent, who would >handle the legalese were there any to be handled. Brin is pretty gamer friendly though - although GURPS Uplift is currently out of print, the game (pseudo RPG) 'Tribes' is published by SJG and was written by him. Dom *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Dominic Mooney [dom@cybergoths.u-net.com] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 4:51 PM To: blue_planet@lists.ient.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Cetaceans >Blame Disney for pushing for beefed-up copyright laws. It's all Mickey >Mouse's fault... It seems that in arguing against Brin's right to control the use of the world _Uplift_ when related to concepts of ermm Uplift (which is intellectual property he developed) you would also see no problem if SJ Games produced _GURPS Traveller: Blue Planet_, which would be a supplement for one of the water worlds in Traveller's previously published material? I mean, it is a blue (water) planet...... I think that although some groups take IPR to stupid lengths (Palladium forex) it needs to be protected as it is what pays for the writers to eat etc. Especially if they do it full time... You just need to avoid the stupidity of certain groups trying to sue companies for using worlds lke 'recon'. Dom *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.ient.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.