Trademarked Item Hero

[Herolover]

I am wondering what the laws are concerning Digital Hero and using a Trademarked or liscensed item by somone other than Hero Games.

I assume that if someone wanted to do an article on a scif-fi setting in which a group of humans homeworlds had been destroyed by a race of machines that it could not be legally put into Digital Hero right?

[Steve Long]

That depends entirely on how it's done. It's not possible to provide intellectual property rights for ideas, generally speaking, just the expression of ideas.

Thus, you can copyright and trademark Dr. Doom. But you can't protect the idea of "megalomaniac world-conquering genius wearing powerful battle armor who's horribly scarred." That's why it's OK to have a Dr. Destroyer in the CU.

Similarly, you can't copyright the idea of "Earth destroyed by robotic invaders; humanity becomes nomads." But you could copyright a particular expression of that idea. And of course, if your "copy" comes a bit too close, you might be liable for infringement.

We certainly can't directly use characters who are copyrighted or trademarked by someone else, though. For example, we couldn't publish HERO System character sheets for, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends.

[AlHazred]

Originally posted by Steve Long
We certainly can't directly use characters who are copyrighted or trademarked by someone else, though. For example, we couldn't publish HERO System character sheets for, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends.

You guys can't get in trouble if someone posts such writeups on your discussion boards, right? This would impact some of my posts, so I'm very interested...

[Steve Long]

It's possible that we could get in trouble, yes. As long as we're not encouraging such posts (which we definitely are not!), we'd have some pretty strong defenses in our favor, but even a single dollar going out the door to lawyers would make the whole situation a loss.

[Eodin]

Steve, So what does that mean for those of us who are posting things like "Star Trek" Hero, "Babylon 5" Hero, and other Hero translations of fictional series. Should we not post them?

[Steve Long]

I don't think it's a problem. We're not encouraging them, and we'd take them down if the property owner requested it. Discussions in a public forum are one thing; publishing stuff in our own magazine and making money off it is another. ;)