CopperHook wrote:


Nothing... At least not in Europe. A third part publisher is in his full right to market material as being useable with HarnMaster and/or Harn.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

To actually answer your questions:



1) Yes
2) Yes - but he's said he'll likely reduce the prices substantially in the near future (at least for new material, possibly also for the existing stuff)
3) Yes
4) Yes. The new version is over twice the length of the old one, with a lot of new material in it.

I'm afraid that I can't answer your HM3/HMG questions, as I don't own either of them.

Hârn and HârnMaster are not registered trademarks. At least the last time I checked.

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Með kveðju, Thorvald
http://www.last.fm/user/hrafnsbjarg

The right to use other companies trademarks, when informing the general public about the compatibilty of a product with another company's product, has been confirmed by the European Community Court, see case c-63/97, 59-60 §, you can read the court ruling at http://www.curia.eu.int/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=sv change lang to whatever suits you.

As for publishing works inspired by Harn, why should it be a problem? There can be no doubt of who is the copyright holder - i.e the third party.

Sure, you might get sued, but that will take place where you live, not in Canada or the US.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

I agree with Patrick. Change "Harn" to "Middle Earth" and see how far you get, even in Europe. Heck, lawyers were going after Chinese knock-off books with the name "Harry Potter" in the title, and everything gets pirated over there.

That would probably be because of the title, titles are often protected as such, even in China...

Your analogy is not a very good one though. There's a huge difference between a novel and a game. Games are meant to be used in a much more practical way than a novel ever could, it's better to think of a role-playing game in the same terms as a toy. Toys can have "spare parts" and add-on's, which a novel hardly could.

My point here is that in the European market third party publishers could publish supplements to pretty much any role-playing game, the reason they don't is of course that, even if they have the law on their side, legal procedures are expensive. There's also the catch that a large part of the market, the US one, would be outside their reach, because of the trademark law in the US. But this last point is not so much of problem, a lot of the European game companies publish on the local market and on the local language only.

A private person, at least in Sweden, has a even better legal position... there is nothing a company can do to prevent private use of trademarks here.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

You don't have to register (R) a trademark (TM) in order to have protection under the law, at least not in the USA. It is true that people in foreign countries must be sued in their country, making the likelihood of a lawsuit pretty much zero unless the infriongement is against a major company, and/or one with offices in the country of the infringement.

It is one thing to say your product is "Compatible with HarnMaster, produced by Columbia Games, Inc." and another to use the trademarks, product identity and copywritten intellectual property of another within your product. Game mechanics cannot generally be copywritten, though I think they can be patented, as in the case of WoTC successfully getting the patent to all "collectible trading card games" (not that I agree with that ruling).

Back to my original topic:
Whether Harn needs d20 or not is not really the issue, nor am I saying it's the best system out there or even the best fit for Harn). What Harn needs (in my opinion) is a major push into the RPG market in a format acceptable to said market. d20 owns a big chunk of the market, therefore it makes sense to cash in on WoTC's marketing. Shane did a good job of producing a d20 version of Harn rules, and I produced a 20+ page document myself for my own d20 Harn campaign. It can be done!

However, GURPS might be a better fit (rules wise) and also has a large audience, so producing a GURPS HarnWorld book might be another way to go. Or producing simply a new rules-neutral generic HarnWorld Campaign Setting hardcover could be another option. However, I think cashing in on d20 is the smartest move financially, as it commands the largest slice of the pie. There is nothing prohibiting producing both GURPS and d20 Harn (aside from licensing issues with WoTC and SJG).

HarnMaster I think, may be dead as far as mainstream acceptance goes, but I could very well be wrong. Without an even more aggressive marketing effort, though, it won't succeed. That's why I advocate going with producing sourcebooks for an already established and far more popular name brand rules system, to take advantage of their already sizable built-in audience and marketing efforts. Since CGI/NRC seem to have poor abilities to finance anything of any such magnitude, that's why I again advocate for getting a big d20 publisher like White Wolf/Sword & Sorcery, Mongoose, AEG, Mystic Eye or Green Ronin to handle production costs, commissioning artwork, and distribution. It makes sense, financially, from a risk management standpoint.

And Patrick/Copper Hook, you and I have crossed swords before on this and similar issues, and there is no offense taken. You've done an amazing job at producing super high quality Harnic works; your love of Harn and ability as a writer is not in question. Neither should my love, nor my desire to see Harn become something more than it is (or likely will ever be, given the past and present state of affairs). I also don't mean to speak badly of CGI or NRC *except* as it applies to their business and marketing skills in relation to Harn. Nobody can be great at everything, which is why you hire or farm out the areas you're not good at to those who are (I'm not advocating myself for any such position, just pointing out a common fact).

One concern I have, and its probably groundless, but it is a concern; is that by trying to make the product more marketable through d20 is that we dumb it down and just don't put out the quality that most of us are used to.

Of course there is always the problem that if things become too good, or good but not good enough, a larger company tries to buy them out. If that happens say good buy to the Harn we all love to one extent or another.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

I think that's a very common concern, and I'd go so far as to say that it's at the core of the entire debate.

I've always been of the opinion that Harn doesn't need to change in order to take advantage of the d20 market. In fact, I think that changing would be a bad idea. I simply think that it needs to be marketed -- not to the d20 population at large, but to the segment of that population who want what Harn, as it stands, has to offer.

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Keith Mann
I really must get around to changing my .sig

TSR had to change "hobbit" to "hafling" in the original D&D. It also had to drop the Cthulhu and Fafhrd and Grey Mouser entries from the original "Deities and Demigods". Why, do you suppose, did they have to do that?

"Kaldor" and "Harn" are just as protected as "Lankmar" and "Newhon", and it has nothing to do with titles.

I'm sorry pbrink, but you are wrong. European law definitely does not dispense with the internationally recognised right of a copyright holder to control the production of derivative works. Are you seriously suggesting the Berne Convention does not apply in Europe?

You are quite right that the author of an authorised derivative work has copyright to the 'derivative' component of their work (although they aquire no rights to the 'underlying' or original work).

The key to this, however, is authorised. A third party cannot simply take it upon themselves to make use of the original copyrighted material and produce their own, unauthorised, derivative work, and claim rights in the new material.

Regards

Jeremy

The Berne Convention certainly apply in Europe, but not in the way you suggest...



I'm sorry Fastred, but this is not entirely correct. In Europe you don't need any permission or authorization to perform a derivate work. Also if the derivate is not a plagiarism the entire content of the derivate work is copyrighted by its author and in no way by the author of the original work.

There are three types of derivate works: independent, adaptations and plagiarisms .

The first type is a work where the author has been inspired by another work, such as when someone picks a place-name from a map and does a local map of that place. The author of this kind of work is the sole copyright holder.

The second type, the adaptation, is a kind of work where an original work has been adapted or transformed, the classic example being the translation. The author of the adaptation is the sole copyright holder to the adaptation, the author of the original work, of course keeps his copyright. The author of an adaptation may not, however, publish his adaptation without permission from the author of the orginal work. The copyright notice should read: Original © XXX. This adaptation © YYYY. Note that, in Sweden at least, the author of an adaptation allways retains his copyright, even if he published his work without permission.

A plagiarism is a work which contains to much of another work, such as text copied verbatim or copied pictures. Such a work is a copyright infringement.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

As long as a trademark does not stand out from the rest of your text, usage according to good practice is allowed (in Europe). The key point is "good practice", in this case it would be to inform a user on how to use the product with another product.

One cannot of course use other parties intellectuall property in an unlawfull way, but see my reply to Fastred for more details.



Game mechanics cannot be either copyrighted nor patented in Europe. A patent protects a technical invention, which a game system is not. It's in fact debateble wheter game mechanics descriptions are protected by copyrights, in my opinion (based on Swedish legal doctrine) they should not be protected .

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

One reason is that US copyright Law in may respects is different from the rest of the worlds copyright laws, which is a good thing to keep in mind.

Names cannot be copyrighted, even if they are fictional. Neither Kaldor nor Harn is protected, which btw is quite correct not all works or entities are worthy of copyright protection.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

CooperHook,
Fastreds comments has nothing to do with your rights as a author and map maker living in Sweden. I would recommend you to do some reading on the subject... For your own good.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

So it seems...



It may seem so to you, but in fact in need not be so. A copyright, as an exlusive right to the works that you have published (and even the one you have not published), is not meant to prevent others from publishing other works inspired by the same sources as you or even inspired by your works. There are limits to the monopoly of a copyright, and there are good reasons as to why.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

So pbrink, are you saying that anyone in Europe could just write a module compatible with an existing system (HarnMaster and HarnWorld for example), publish it and start selling it? And use the title HarnMaster? As you said that:



Or would that be a plagiarism?

A books title is normally protected in its own right, so: No you could not use "HarnMaster" as the title.

As long as the contents of the module really is new, it would be OK. Rules as such are not protected, the rules descriptions might, but that's not certain. Writing something new for HarnWorld, being inspired by the existing works is also OK.

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Peter Brink
Rollspelshörnan

If anybody here is an accredited intellectual property attorney, please raise your hand.

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Keith Mann
I really must get around to changing my .sig

Sorry, I overlooked this and failed to reply earlier.

The answer is worse.

First of all, I don't want to risk quoting Leitchy out of context, so:


I think there are significantly fewer customers now than there were in the 80's. I don't know how many copies of HarnWorld were sold, for example, but there were certainly multiple printings. Today, by contrast, there's not enough interest to justify printing Trierzon.

Retail presence has gone from extensive (there was a time when every game store I visited from Niagara to Toronto carried a full line of Harn products) to none. The last game store clerk I spoke to about Harn had never even heard of it.

Advertising has gone from full-page, full-colour ads in Dragon magazine to irregular Dicey Business e-mails.

I started with Harn when I was 15. How many 15 year-olds are on this forum? How many 15 year-old D&D players have heard of Harn? (And don't tell me none of them would care. I'm sure that there are just as many 15 year-olds today who find hack 'n slash D&D vapid but think FRPG'ing is a great hobby, and who would latch on to Harn in an instant, as there were in the 80's.)

The Harn market is shrinking and aging. There is very little influx of young, new customers. As I said, if CGI, NRC, and we the community are content to let Harn fade away, then nothing need be done; it's inevitable.

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Keith Mann
I really must get around to changing my .sig

pbrink:
I really am amazed by your comments. Either many companies don't care about the law or I am misunderstanding you - or you are wrong.

Just try to publish your own Asterix-comic. Good luck! You will be sued before the ink hits the paper...
Even if you do not use the title name(s). Just use some french celts with funny noses that beat the crap out of stupid romans because they have this magic potion that makes them unbeatable.

Where is the difference to what you suggest? I mean, if you write a description for any hârnic town, you will use the churches, the subinfeudation data, the beasties, the geography, etc., etc., i.e. lots of things others did.

I have not studied this topic... but I fail to see a difference to the Asterix example.

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Florian
A most unique Ivashu