That being said, again, I don't actually practice IP law, and all I just said above I'm remembering from law school. Whether WotC considers it a trade mark, trade dress, or they consider the concept behind the gith a copyright (or, most likely, a combination of the above), however, is another question entirely. I guess my point is - you can't "copyright" the word "gith"(whatever), so no copyright exists. And in fact, that is I reckon exactly what they'd do if you were to try and use the gith without permission, since they claim it as "product identity." So they *could* try and claim trade dress, or copyright, from them. That is - a psionic race of humanoids who were former slaves of a vast evil illithid empire, but won their freedom then Declared Two Skies and all that jazz. But they certainly could have - I've honestly never bothered to look.Īnd leaving the issues of trade dress aside, Wizards could claim to have a copyright on the *idea* of the githyanki/githzerai. Far as I'm aware, WotC has *not* trademarked the word "githyanki", "gith", "githzerai", etc. And I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that Wizards of the Coast cannot hold a copyright on the word "githyanki", or "gith(anything)". I am a lawyer - I don't actually work in Intellectual Property, but I focused a lot of my law school studies in IP work.
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