Topic: Do how to books violate the rights of software copyright holders?

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

A 24 year old WoW player is suing the games maker after he was stopped from selling his guide on how to play the game on eBay

Its argument was that Kopp could not lawfully sell a guide that "attempts to trade off the substantial goodwill and recognition that Blizzard has built up in connection with its World of Warcraft product".

Next software forum help postings will become illegal.

[Just plain old Punisher]

It's intellectual property, in a way I can understand why the company sued. He isn't given them any compensation for using their intellectual property. If he created the stuff for free, sure, but when it enters into the for-profit arena that's completly different.

Think of it this way, 3rd party mods for SFC2/3 are perfectly fine, as long as you don't start selling them.

[Dracho]

There have been "unofficial" guides for years.  They're hoping he's poor and he'll quit and go away.  Someone with the money to pay the lawyers would own them.

[Nemesis]

Think of it this way, 3rd party mods for SFC2/3 are perfectly fine, as long as you don't start selling them.

I suspect that if the images in the mod were not variants on other peoples copyrights (Fed, Klingon ships etc) but original creations that they would be unable to block it so long as you clearly stated that they were indpendently created.  You might need to include a program to automatically edit the existing shiplist/fighterlists with your specs as the file itself is also protected by copyright.  Nothing to prevent a 3rd party from making an automatic editor to adjust it to match your mod though.

There were some gaming companies that made Dungeons and Dragons materials for years by never using anything directly from the D&D books (magic missile spells would be energy bolts for example).  TSR tried and couldn't touch them because though they were usable with D&D and were so identified they contained no TSR copywritten materials.  Finally they embraced the 3rd party addons by publishing the D20 rules and conditions for use.