PALLADIUM BOOKS® INTERNET POLICY
RIGHTS AND LICENSES
Palladium is happy to have individuals play Palladium games and supplements
on the net or other on line services, without royalty, so long as the play is
for personal enjoyment and not financial gain.
Palladium is also happy to have you create derivative works of Palladium
text, so long as these derivative works are used solely on the net or other on
line services for personal fun.
We cannot grant permission to create derivative works, or to take any of our
other registered Copyright rights, for commercial purposes or financial gain,
unless there is a separate, written agreement between you and Palladium.
Please note that permission to play on-line does not include permission to
down-load hard copies of Palladiums copy-written materials. If you want a hard
copy of a Palladium product, buy the book! After all, if people stop buying the
books, we won't be able to pay our writers and artists to keep creating, and
there will be nothing for anyone!
Palladium and its agents cannot be responsible for any violation of other
people's rights which you might commit while using Palladium products. For
example, if someone combines a Palladium product with another creator's
product, thereby infringing the copyright of the other creator, Palladium is
not responsible. In such a case, it is only fair that the person who commits
such a violation is solely responsible for their actions. In addition, the
violator is also responsible for any damages that Palladium may suffer because
of the violation.
To implement the policies described in the three paragraphs above, Palladium
needs to formally grant you a "limited license" to use Palladium
text. Please consider this paragraph your formal "limited license" to
use Palladium copy-written text and trademarks solely for your own personal use
and enjoyment on the net and other on-line services. In addition, Palladium
grants you a "limited license" to create works which are derivative
of Palladium copy-written text, so long as the resulting "derivative
works" are used only on the net and other on-line services, for personal
fun, and NOT for financial gain.
In order to keep this "limited license", you must always use
proper Palladium notices (see section below on "Notices"), and must
also comply with all Palladium policies (including but not limited to policies
about liability for your actions on the net and other on-line services) which
we post.
We're going to keep an eye on how our policies are being received and
followed. We also expect some of you to raise issues about our net policies
which we should think about. In short, we expect our net policy to evolve.
Palladium therefore reserves the right to change or even revoke this limited
license. Palladium also reserves all rights which are not specifically granted
above.
DERIVATIVE WORKS
Above, we've stated our policies about your use of Palladium intellectual
properties. A related policy involves Palladium's use of works created by you
using Palladium characters, settings, etc.
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, these are "Derivative Works" which,
legally we have a right to prevent (take a look at Section 106 of the Copyright
Act). Despite our rights, we are willing to allow the creation of derivatives
of our text strictly for personal use (though not for financial gain).
In addition, we are not interested in owning the derivative works which you
create strictly for fun and personal use on-line. Unlike some other gaming
companies, we are not going to exploit these derivative works merely because
you posted them in a certain place. Rather, if we are interested in any work
which you post, we will negotiate with you to acquire rights. If we reach an
agreement with you, fine. If we don't, you can still use the derivative work
for you personal, non-financial purposes (obviously, you still can't use or
license a derivative work for financial gain in any way, under the Copyright
Act).
We sincerely hope that Palladium's new Net policy leads to hours of great
gaming on net for all of us. Let us know what you think!
NOTICES
Because of the way Copyright and Trademark laws work, anyone who up-loads
any Palladium material must include proper Copyright and Trademark notices.
COPYRIGHT NOTICES
For all text and other works covered by the U.S. Copyright Act, insert a
copyright notice like the one that appears in the front of the book. For
instance, a proper copyright notice for Rifts® would be:
© 1983, 1987, 1988, 1990,1995 Kevin Siembieda; © 2000 Palladium Books, All
rights reserved world wide. No part of this work may be reproduced in part or
whole, in any form or by any means, without permission from the publisher. All
incidents, situations, institutions, governments and people are fictional and
any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental."
This kind of notice must be included at least once any time you are
uploading any derivative Palladium material.
TRADEMARK NOTICES
For any use of our trademarks (whether registered or unregistered), the
proper notice should be used whenever the mark is used. There are two (2) kinds
of trademark notices. The simplest type is the ® for registered trademarks and
the (™) for unregistered trademarks. These "simple" notices should be
used every time a Palladium mark is used, whether in a title or text.
The ® is used each time a registered mark is used, and the ™ is used each
time an unregistered mark is used (see below for lists of Palladium registered
and unregistered marks).
It is sometimes confusing as to when a ® or a ™ should be used and when it
does not have to be used. If in doubt, use the notice.
In addition to the "simple" notices (see above), you should use a
full notice (see below) at the beginning of any derivative work.
The most common "full" trademark notices are as follows:
FOR REGISTERED TRADEMARKS:
"(insert name of trademark) ® is a registered trademark owned and
licensed by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books, Inc."
For example, here is a proper trademark for Rifts®:
"Rifts® is a registered trademark owned and licensed by Kevin Siembieda
and Palladium Books, Inc."
Palladium's other registered marks are:
Palladium Books®, Mechanoids® The Mechanoid Invasion®, Rifts®, Rifter®,
Megaverse®, RECON®, After the Bomb®., Phase World®, and Nightbane®
FOR OUR UNREGISTERED TRADEMARKS
The proper notice for an unregistered mark is (™), placed immediately
following the mark.
"(insert name of trademark)™ is a trademark owned and licensed by Kevin
Siembieda and Palladium Books, Inc."
For example:
"Cyber-Knight ™, Coalition States ™, and Triax ™ are trademarks owned
and licensed by Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books, Inc
Our unregistered trademarks include:
Nightbane™, Nightlands™, Heroes Unlimited™, Villains Unlimited™, Beyond the
Supernatural™, Boxed Nightmares™, Ninjas & Superspies™, Mystic China™,
Palladium Fantasy RPG™, Triax™, Mindwerks™, Vampire Kingdoms™, The Juicer
Uprising™, Wormwood™, Psyscape™, Mega-Damage™, S.D.C.™, I.S.P.™, P.P.E.™,
SAMAS™, Splugorth™, Cyber-Knight™, Glitter Boy™, Juicer™, Mind Melter™,
Psi-Stalker™, Coalition States™, Northern Gun™, Erin Tarn™, Naruni™, System
Failure™ ... and other names and titles.
We hope this information about intellectual property and notices is useful.
Please let us know what you think.
Maryann and Kevin Siembieda, and Larry Jordan, Esq.