Re: [MISC] [OT] Bring and Battle

[snip]

>>>As an aside, having said that, I'm sure many WH40K players will be
>>>quite amazed by what I here is in the new version of the rules....
>>>sounds like they basically stole (okay, independently developed?) a
>>>bunch of conceptual ideas and systems that sound *perilously* close
>>>to those used in FMA and the focus of FMA systems like Stargrunt. It
>>>will be interesting to see how this hits the WH40K community....

[snip]

>Except that they have a full-time professional legal department, and
all
>the other smaller companies like us don't. The rights and protection of
>rules systems and mechanisms is a horribly grey area at the best of
times
>(which can sometimes be a double-edged sword - otherwise no-one but TSR
>would be using polyhedral dice, and we'd probably all be paying
licensing
>fees to H.G.Wells' estate....). Whatever GW do to 40K will all change
by
>the following issue of WD anyway, because that is the only way they can
>keep selling new minis at the rate they have to do to keep their
>shareholders happy.
>That said, anyone out there have enough legal background to really know
the
>position on this sort of thing...?

I've actually attended a few seminars on game design and publishing back
in
the day that I thought I might venture into that field...

As I understand it, SYSTEMS cannot be copywrited unless the specific
system
in question is inseperable from the creative background attached to the
game.

The precedent setting case in this regard was Milton Bradley vs.
"Anti-Monopoly," where it was determined that any number of games could
share the same system as long as they were creatively different. Just
look
at the number of "roll a d6 and move that many boxes" games.

Creative images, backgrounds, histories, etc. ARE copywritable. So, if
someone came out with another game that had a NAC, ESU, etc. Jon could
sue.

Schoon