Mentioning Hero Suppliments

[Bryan_96]

[My spelling is not the greatest so please bear with me]

I have gone to some other gaming webb sites, all, yes ALL use the 4th or 5th ED. Hero / Champions Rules.
However, when it comes to having the bad guys, i.e. the villians. You know the ones we all do or should know and love, they are either not using them or are making up their own kind based on 5th ED rules.

Now, you guys are selling the suppliments with the bad guys in them, and these other webb sites could use to develope and play a campaign based on these suppliments. They show storylines of the campaign, as to what the heros do or did. These webb site could show the storyline of said campagin, items found, bad guys battled, evil plots thwarted, using your suppliments. Is that not a form of free advertizing?

The reasoning for this question is that I have my characters written with complete backgrounds based on 4th and or 5th ED histories. I have submitted these characters to various webb sites, have been told that I researched my histories well, but they can not be used. REASON: Although we are using the Hero 5th or 4th ED rules, this is all we are using. "We do not wish to be sued by Hero Games for copy-write infringiment." Is this true?
I mean can a webb site, that does not charge people for playing or PBeM'ing, be sued by you guys for using and or naming a suppliment that Hero Games has sold or is Selling? Be it 4th or 5th ED. suppliment?
IF so, why are you selling it? IF they, being the webb sites, purchase the suppliment from a licenced dealer or retailer and to not place any pages of the suppliment on the webb site, would they be wrong in naming either the bad guy or the suppliment it came from? Like I said if they mention it in their game playing log / history or their Campaign, would this not be a free form of advertizing for you guys?

Again if I am wrong I do apologize, I have questions and am feeling very frustrated. I worked damn hard on my characters to convert from one ED of Champions to the next and would like to use them and see how they would be in the campaign.
Thank you for your's and anyone else's time.
Brad

[Balok]

You may find some answers at the policy page, <a href="http://www.herogames.com/policies.jsp">here</a>.

Essentially, HERO doesn't want folks, even for free, making extensive use of their IP. The usual reasons for this are several:
<ol>
<li>A company needs to protect it's trademarks, or the courts can decide they have entered the public domain. That's essentially value lost; no different in principle than if you leave the back door of the warehouse open and thieves cart off your inventory.
<li>A company needs to protect its ability to make money from its IP. It's ability to do this is diluted by the amount of non-company created usage generally available.
<li>A company needs to protect its reputation, which means it needs to exert control over how its IP is used, even when it grants permission. This is why, even if you licensed a character, HERO would certainly insist on the right to review.
</ol>

[Steve Long]

We don't have any objection to you mentioning our books -- for example, writing something like, "This is my main player character, who I developed based on an idea I read in the origin of Black Paladin, a villain featured in Hero's CKC supplement."

Nor do we object to minor textual references to our characters, such as a mention in your web-posted campaign log that this evening's adventure pitted the PCs against Binder, Blackstar, and Cyclone.

What we do object to is the re-publishing, even in altered form, of any or our intellectual property -- villains, storylines, or what have you. We make our money selling that stuff, after all. If your histories and backgrounds are too tightly interwoven with ours, this becomes a problem, and I suspect that many website owners are erring on the side of caution, as they should. In any event, even for the casual references, we'd appreciate it if you noted that those characters are Hero Games property, and perhaps a link to the website.

Balok's already pointed you to the Policies page. If you have any further questions, you're welcome to post them here, or to contact me directly at SteveL@herogames.com.