🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings,

I am with a roleplaying game company who was recently sued by a
competitor for trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair
competition, and copyright infringement.  We have, I believe, good legal
representation and, I feel, a strong case for our defense.  The purpose
of this post is to briefly describe the case and see if anyone has any
suggestions on how to maximize our position.

In April of 1992 we published a roleplaying game product called The
Primal Order (TPO).  This book (we're talking publishing here, not
computer games) is not a complete roleplaying game in and of itself, 
but is rather what we call a *Capsystem.*  Capsystems are designed to 
be supplements to existing game systems and require that you use them 
in conjunction with such.

In order to explain how to use TPO, we printed "integration notes" on
how TPO interfaces with 17 different roleplaying systems on the market.
TPO itself was 244 pages long, and the integration notes took up, in
total, only about 20 pages of the book (Appendix A).  In addition, on
the back of the book we listed the game systems that our product is
compatible with.  Underneath that listing we referred the reader to the
appropriate page in our book where the trademark ownership listing could
be found (page iv, I believe).  On that page we listed what companies
owned which games/trademarks, etc.  In Appendix A we stated that the
text was not developed with permission of those game companies, etc.

At a summary judgement hearing last month we had two causes of action
(there were six) thrown out, but it now looks like we're going to have
to go to trial on the other four, primarily, we believe, because it was
a non-evidentiary hearing and the judge was therefore not able to look
at TPO and see that we'd done everything correctly.

We've found a few cases that seem to support our position, but I've yet
to find anything in the gaming industry, pariticularly in the
roleplaying industry.  Does anyone know of any cases along these lines?
Any ideas or suggestions?

Our attorney probably has things well in hand, but there's a lot at
stake here and I'm inclined to do as much research and so forth on my
own as I can just in case I happen to stumble onto something he hasn't.

Thank you in advance,

					--Mavra!
					  Peter D. Adkison
					  Systems Analyst
					  Boeing Defense & Space Group

(Please e-mail me at mavra@wizards.com instead of the address in the
header, or post publicly.  Thanks.