A couple of sinister ideas occurred to me just now, so here's my final thought for the night:
1. Let's say that someone has a character on the live EQ servers. That person quits EQ, and later on creates the same character on a public EQ server (non-SOE). Could VI use this to force the 3rd-party server operator to purge all characters that once existed on SOE servers?
2. Let's say that someone creates some kind of artistic content that predates the game (story, play, artwork, whatever) but doesn't pubish it or otherwise get it copyrighted (maybe it's unfinished, maybe the person needs more confidence, whatever). Then that person creates a character using a name from the original work on an SOE server. Later on, the person completes/publishes/copyrights the artistic work. Would SOE be able to steal ownership or profits from said work by asserting that the person ceded ownership of the name to them, and charge copyright infringement? I only bring it up because the clause you mention is SO draconian that any hellspawn that would come up with it in the first place just may try to actually invoke it.
WC
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