A Lawsuit Waiting to Happen?

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

After much resistance, I decided that I would pick up Paradigm's Witch Hunter: The Invisible World. What decided me was my visit to the Paradigm website, where I discovered fifteen scenarios that have been run at conventions available as free downloads. I've played in one of them, and I figure that they're probably solid enough to be useful, and probably useful to folks trying to figure out how to write a convention scenario of their very own. And, I thought I'd support a company doing something that cool. There's another scenario that I think will be posted within a month. But, I digress.

So, I went to The Compleat Strategist, chatted with folks, and got an update of the current situation in the L5R world. (Let's see. We're up to "3rd edition, revised", as opposed to mere 3rd edition, and there've been some changes. And, fortunately, a website archiving the fiction.) I grabbed the store's last copy of Witch Hunter, and let the staff copy down the date needed to order more in.

I also looked at another product I was considering buying, a supplement for White Wolf's Hunter: The Vigil. I had already picked up the core rule book when I got a coupon, and got an amusing reaction from bugsybanana: "Wow. The school yearbook sure has changed." (Three guesses what the name of our high school alma mater is.)

But, I decided that I could resist getting the supplement, as I haven't yet read the corebook. Then, I tried to explain this to the staff, and things got very confusing.

I was buying Witch Hunter.

I was speaking about a supplement for Hunter.

The supplement is called Witchfinder. Witchfinder for Hunter.

You see where the confusion came in? We tried straightening each other about about whether we were discussing Witch Hunter or Witchfinder or Hunter.

jlighton said that this was a lawsuit waiting to happen. When I boggled, he, ebartley, and mnemex explained that the whole point of trademarks is to avoid this sort of confusion, and that someone might order Witch Hunter and get Witchfinder by mistake, or vice versa.

I don't know how likely an actual lawsuit is, but there is great potential for great confusion here.

Cross posting to drcpunk.