New TSR story gets curiouser

From Ernie G: “TSR has been gone. There’s a ton of artists and game designers and people that play….. and recently they were dissed for being old-fashioned, possibly anti-modern trends, and enforcing, or even having the concepts of gender identity (laughs).”

All I’m trying to do is fill in the strip mine, allow this old fertile soil to produce more games and products again. We’re not gonna be able to get back the diamond that was Dungeons & Dragons. We’ll be able to make things that might have chips of diamond material… we’re never gonna see that great D&D diamond again, I don’t think.”

And Tenkar on trademarks: “Trademarks are basically just fancy names representing a legal entity. When you reserve a trademark, it has to be designated for a specific audience, AND you have to make sure that you protect that name. Simply paying to register one isn’t enough. You know how people tend to use Kleenex to describe any facial tissue? Yeah, “we” can do that, but if a company making facial tissues calls their product Kleenex they are getting sued to oblivion because the actual Kleenex has to defend their trademark. Evidently Hasbro, or more than likely Hasbro’s legal compliance team, let the various TSR trademarks “die” by not renewing them. Since the legal entity that was TSR became Hasbro and Hasbro still makes RPGs, as long as they maintained (and was willing to defend) the old trademark, it was theirs.”

Once they didn’t care, those trademarks were up for grabs. Literally that’s all this is…a name. No intellectual, or real, property goes with the name. I’ve seen folks think that just because you now have an older company’s legal name/trademarks you have X,Y, or Z from the old company.”