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Important trademark changes

April 2, 2010 by Casey   Comments (0)

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development, thought police, interactive fiction, arthur's legacy, zed revolution

After having a long discussion with our lawyer about Thought Police Interactive Fiction's intellectual property, we came to some conclusions about our marks:

  • The use of the trademark Legends Interactive (Theater) will cease, effectively immediately. There are potential mark conflicts with West End Games' Legend System and with a shop that uses the mark as a url. For the record, neither enterprise approached us with concerns. We unilaterally decided to use a more unique mark, for our benefit and theirs. The interactive fiction/roleplaying game system will now be called Opus Interactive. If you are using our marks or referring to our properties, please correct any mentions of Legends Interactive (Theater) to Opus Interactive, where reasonable and practical.
  • We will be releasing a set of trademark licenses that permit the use of Opus Interactive and associated marks. This achieves a unified branding and easy identification of the system. It also is intended to fit the spirit of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licenses under which Opus Interactive is being released. The Creative Commons licenses only cover copyrights. The Opus Interactive Trademark License will fill in the gap to cover protected marks. Each setting will also have its own trademark license to match their broad non-commercial licensing.

Never underestimate the complexity of the legal realities in publishing, licensing, and social websites. I have benefited greatly by consulting our lawyer for advice and assistance in drafting appropriate licenses and policies. I highly recommend that anyone else undertaking a venture that requires extensive intellectual property licensing and/or legal policies also consult a legal professional for advice and assistance.