It's a not impossible (but not plausible--they are convinced they own the future and seem to have little or no concern about the past) Worst Case Scenario, but isn't that one of the cases where the retroclones and the studied 'speaking around' the trademarks approach used by the OSR would come into play?
Possibly, but I'm more concerned with the erasure of history. It's already begun, really; when they were working on the OD&D set, Mearls stated flatly the cover of Eldritch Wizardry was "highly questionable" or "objectionable" or something and would be excised. You don't change/remove art. You don't. I don't care how uncomfortable it makes you or anyone else. And yes, RPG artwork
is art.
It'll be little things as time goes on. The covers of the OD&D books. Then art in the reprint/POD copies. Then mentions of Gygax
et al, and so on and etcetera, until someone (maybe even this guy) can perform the final purge and they can act like D&D history started with 3rd ed. or something and mumble about "previous editions not being up to modern standards".
Pat Pulling and her crowd couldn't have penned a better scenario.
We'll see, I guess.