united-states intellectual-property
It is true that character classes are stock characters?
<p>It is true that character classes from a game are considered &quot;stock characters&quot; and therefore excluded from copyright protection? If they are not considered &quot;stock characters&quot; what makes them (somewhat) free to use? The concept of character classes was introduced with Dungeons &amp; Dragons in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Examples of character classes found on video games and tabletop RPGs: cleric, druid, warrior, paladin, rogue, shaman and mage.</p>

<p>Arguably not (or, the example terms are not restricted by copyright, but not for the reasons given, which means this protection may not extend past the examples given in all cases).</p>
<p>The protection for &quot;stock characters&quot; comes from the &quot;<em>Scènes à faire</em>&quot; doctrine, which protects elements that are elementary and near-required to be part of a genre. For example, a fairy tale is &quot;obligated&quot; to start with &quot;Once upon a time&quot; and end with &quot;And they lived happily ever after&quot;.</p>
<p>Character classes, by virtue of being character classes, do not qualify under this doctrine to me, simply by virtue of being &quot;character classes&quot;.</p>
<p>What matters are:</p>
<p>a) the terms used for the classes are generic</p>
<p>b) there is prior art to any claimed copyright, with uses of such terms in fantasy fiction stretching back at least hundreds of years and predating, for example, modern  English.</p>
<p>Note that the above is not universal to all character classes. For example, if you had classes whose names that directly related to various other copyrighted works IP (e.g. &quot;Jedi Councilor&quot;, &quot;Yogo Wardmaster&quot;, &quot;Grey Warden&quot;, &quot;Aes Sedai&quot;, &quot;Asha'man&quot; &quot;Eversor Assassin&quot;), those could still be infringing  copyright.</p>
