[chaosprime]

I don't think that would be an obstacle. There's a service being provided (which I suppose makes the relevant IP entity a service mark, not a trademark, but close enough), and if the lack of a fee for it made IP law not apply, we would've heard about it in a considerable uproar around a considerable number of Web sites, by now.

The usual thing there would be to have the mark owned by an industry association that sets the standards for who can use it -- I think an example would be how the "Real" milk symbol thing is handled. The RPIMUD Network went 90% of the way on this, creating the affiliative body and standards definition, they just bobbled the part that involves making their standards enforceable by means other than whingeing. Then, of course, they imploded, but never mind.

The way I see it, the problem is that a term was invented to evangelize and mark as superior (let's not temporize, RPIMUD people have a reputation for snotty elitism because they earned it) a particular style of game, and moreover a specific group of games. The term was rather well chosen in how it communicates to the market the message "this game is the next step in awesome from anything you're used to". So naturally other people wanted to take advantage of this marketing device as well, because "roleplaying intensive" sounded just like their game to them, and these supposed standards for what RPI meant seemed awfully arbitrary (I seem to recall you deconstructing them thoroughly, and I could do the same). But the people who invented the term only meant it to provide marketing advantage to their games, so they get in an uproar, but all they can do is keep trying to lock down the definition to arbitrary criteria that really mean "our games and not yours", with no way of enforcing anything, so it just goes back and forth.

I sound kinda down on RPI here, and that's kinda a shame, because I can really relate to its ideals, especially the way that its values exalt simulation design over game design (which is always market suicide, and exactly the way I like things). If even someone as into its ideals as me can be annoyed by the pitch of self-congratulatory evangelism associated with it, though, that part really may have gone too far.

As far as an IP grab on "PK" or "HnS" goes, I don't think there's any question of being able to trademark/service mark a term that's already in broad use, which is why it's probably considerably too late for RPI. The time when the iron was hot, there, would have been when nobody had heard of it, before the evangelism wave.