"Intellectual Property" ownership?

[thoth]

Here's a probably strange question...

If someone actually came up with adventures or even settings with this system, and acknowledged it, would or could you claim any level of "intellectual property" over their work being that is was made with Your system?

If this hasn't been already addressed in some formal way, might it be worthwhile to do so? Like some sort of statement at the beginning of every product stating "what's yours is yours".

I doubt it's an issue now, but one never knows what the future holds...

[Valamir]

Interesting question.
Legally I don't know that I'd have any claim at all over a setting someone created using Universalis as a tool even if I wanted to (which I don't).

I imagine I could make a claim against someone selling something as a "Universalis" supplement, but given the nature of the game, there really isn't much in the way of supplement material that I'd want to discourage.

I would love for people to do that, and especially love if they acknowledged Uni's role in it and even linked back to us or let us link to them (in case anyone's thinking about something along those lines).

Definitely worth thinking about making it formally "open source" or something along those lines should we decide to really crank up distribution.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, as long as the rules are not in the supplement or anything else that's copyrighted, I don't think that it would matter.

That said, this is not legal advice.  :-)

The best thing for people to do would be to contact us with some details of the project if they have questions. We're reasonable people, and want to work to create a larger community of players for our game. As such we'd probably sooner help a person with such a poject than hinder them.

Mike