Tuesday, June 26, 2018

TWIC: don't get cocky - it's okay, you can, madness

A romance author tried to trademark the word 'cocky' in book titles. She failed.
Another tried to copyright Dragon Slayer.
The application lists a series of self-described "pulp harem fantasies" by Michael-Scott Earle, published by MSE Media LLC, as evidence of the mark's use in connection with a "Downloadable series of fiction books," Class 009.
Amazon lists 652 books whose titles include the phrase "Dragon Slayer" -- and that's to say nothing of the long-out-of-print Runescape titles.
Of course, none of the dozens (hundreds?) of authors who have used "Dragon Slayer" in a title have sought a trademark, because the term is generic and not trademarkable.
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Welcome to Chuck Wendig's TED Talk

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Gord Sellar discusses a Free RPG Day event in Korea. When I dabbled in D&D, I mostly followed the rules and didn't add detail to them. My friends, well-meaning but unaware of what we 'were allowed to change' did the same. This bit of creativity is the heart of RPG games and we weren't aware of how to use it. I guess I am hoping that our lack of awareness was the problem and not our lack of creativity:
Given that the characters obviously had some shared history [this was the back story for this specific adventure], I asked them to fill that out a little, after they introduced their characters by name—just something that each character liked about another character in the group, or something that had come to annoy them about another character. An interesting little web of connections emerged, with a couple of characters envious of certain others, a couple respectful-but-insecure toward others, and one resentful of another having “left him for dead that one time.” What was good about this was that it gave them something to build upon later, as the game continued, and they did return to those little tidbits a number of times—the character who’d left someone else for dead in the past was left for dead himself this time around, and there was a running gag about one character’s failed romance with a girl from the village.
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A question and part of my answer on Quora:

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