Wizards of the Coast aren’t remotely as attack lawyer prone as the original TSR were, but they protect their intellectual property (IP).
One of the monsters that WotC does consider their IP is the Beholder. In particular, the combination of the name Beholder and a monster that looks like a one-eyed, floating sphere with a large mouth and additional eye-stalks is sacrosanct.
The Kickstarter Behold My Brain! fell foul of this. It was subject to a copyright claim by Wizards of the Coast and then pulled by the creator as a result.
To try and recreate the image, which isn’t available via Google or Bing caches, Geek Native used Kicktraq and the AI Image Enlarger. It’s used here as fair use reporting, not as a legal challenge.
Until Wizard Lawyers struck, the project was doing well, nearly at 100 backers and had funded on the 14th.
The STL file would allow other people to 3D print their own Beholders. Geek Native can’t confirm, but if the Kickstarter was also offering commercial rights to the pattern, then that might especially have upset D&D’s owners.
Which monsters are WotC IP?
Page 1 of the SRD5 lists which monsters Wizards will protect with attack lawyers.
- Lady of Pain,
- beholder,
- gauth,
- carrion crawler,
- tanar’ri,
- baatezu,
- displacer beast,
- githyanki,
- githzerai,
- mind flayer,
- illithid,
- umber hulk,
- yuan-ti
In general, Wizard of the Coast takedowns of Kickstarter projects are rare.
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