Re: Richard's PBeM Server (Monthly Post)

From: colley@qucis.queensu.ca (Paul Colley)

Date: Sat, 03 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000

In article <32025f46.25005468@news.htp.com>,
Tim Mirabile <tim@mail.htp.com> wrote:

>Richard Rognlie <rrognlie@erols.com> wrote:
>
>>Othello (Copyright (c) 1973,1990 Pressman Toy Co.)
>
>Is it actually possible to copyright or patent a game, and what does
>that mean?

You left off "trademark" from this list, which is also important
(though I see you mention it later).

THE FOLLOWING IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.  If you want legal advice, consult a lawyer.
It's just my layman's opinion.

Copyright covers the creative expression of an idea, but not the idea
itself.  You can always convey the same information in a different
expression without violating copyright, if you remove the creative
component.

What's a creative component?  Certainly the word-for-word expression of
the rules.  If you copy them verbatim, you have violated copyright.
Artwork is almost certainly a no-no.

What's the underlying, impossible-to-copyright information?  Ideas and
concepts.

In Othello, the game itself is impossible to protect by copyright.
There is not enough "creative" in the choice of an 8x8 square board,
flipping bracketed pieces, adding pieces until board is full, person
with the most colours wins.

However, copyright is an effective protection (again, in my
non-lawyer's opinion) for Monopoly.  The names "Park Place",
"Boardwalk", "Reading Railroad", position of Go and Jail and all the
text on the Community cards, etc. make it full of crative elements.

You could make a game that would play much the same, with all new
properties, prices, and different cards and starting amounts of
money... but it just wouldn't be Monopoly anymore, would it?  Who would
want to play it?   "I want to be the shoe!  What do you mena, there's
no shoe or top-hat or wheel-barrow in this game?"  :-)

Obviously, there is a broad range between those two extremes, and
somewhere in between copyright becomes an issue.  Exactly where is
(unfortunately) for the courts and lawyers to fight over.

Copyright does not protect ideas, and games that consist only of ideas
can be "copied" (but not the creative elements!).  Patents protect
ideas---but patents must be explicitly applied for, are relatively
expensive to obtain, and are only granted for "inventions"---new,
useful ideas that have never been presented to the public before.

Patent rarely applies to abstract games, being more suitable for game
equipment than the game itself.  The best example I can think of in a
board game is the "Pop-a-matic" die in the game "Trouble," which was
probably a patentable invention.  If patented, you could not copy the
pop-a-matic die... but you could, of course, just roll a normal die.
Marketing would work hard to associated the "Pop-a-matic" die with the
game of trouble, and obviously they succeeded---I still remember those
commercials from my youth!

On the other hand, I hated that gizmo, and always just rolled a die
:-).  So if you omitted the pop-a-matic element, it would still be the
same game.  Patent protection didn't give much protection there (in my
opinion).

Trademark is a third, and very important issue.  Trademark covers the
things that consumers use to identify products and manufactureers.
Words, phrases, logos, colour schemes... are all potential trademarks.
Trademarks are identification of the game, not the game itself.  The
word "Othello" is a trademark, a label used to identify the product of
a particular company, and nobody else can use it.

Trademark very strongly protects the name "Othello".  You can copy the
game, but you can't call it "Othello".

>Does it mean that if I make my own Othello board, I'm violating it?

An Othello board is just an 8x8 grid.  You can make an 8x8 grid without
violating anything.  Othello pieces are just two-sided discs, you can
certainly make 64 two-sided discs without violating anything.

If you call it "Othello", though, you're liable for the stealing of the
trademark.

>                                                                     Does it
>mean that Microsoft violated this by selling the game Reversi (identical to
>Othello)

As long as they didn't call it Othello, didn't copy any of the rules
verbatim (and, probably, also should not copy the organization used in
presenting the rules!  Don't rewrite sentence-by-sentence, write from
*scratch*), and didn't copy anything "artistic" about the original
Othello board, they should not need permission.

>Also, is Ataxx copyrighted/patented/trademarked?  The first I heard of
>it was when it was an Atari (I think) arcade game.  It also appeared in
>the 7th Guest.

The arcade game, if I recall, had a variety of different boards for
each level.  That sort of choice is creative---you would be violating
copyright if you chose the same boards in the same order, or if you
copied even one "creative" board layout.  A square grid or hex "circle"
isn't creative, but a lop-sided figure with some random holes in it
probably is (and if I remember the Arcade game, it certainly had such
oddball boards).

The name "Ataxx" is likely trademarked.

Your memeory of "the game of Ataxx" probably emphasizes the rules (grow
one, or hop two, convert adjacent opponents) and glosses over the
particular boards it was played on, am I right?  In which case, you can
copy what you think of as "the game Ataxx" without violating
copyright.

- Paul Colley
colley@qucis.queensu.ca           +1 613 545 3807
http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/home/colley/info.html
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you
going to speak it to?"    --Clarence Darrow

References

Richard's PBeM Server (Monthly Post)
Richard Rognlie <rrognlie@erols.com>
Wed, 31 Jul 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Richard's PBeM Server (Monthly Post)
tim@mail.htp.com (Tim Mirabile)
Fri, 02 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000