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Re: (OT) Rules "inspiration"

From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio <maxxon@s...>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 14:00:07 +0300 (EEST)
Subject: Re: (OT) Rules "inspiration"

On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, Shrike wrote:

>      I'm not a lawyer, and to my knowledge, neither is Dave Arneson,
but
> this one very much surprised me and helped me understand why there
were so
> many clones out there.  On the other hand, the recent US patent that
> Wizards of the Coast received for "collectable card games" seems to be
an
> indication of some ways around copyright law.
 
IMHO, that patent is patently (pun intended) absurd. Should Nolan
Bushnell
have had a patent for the concept of video games? (Or Ralph Baer, or
Atari, or... doesn't matter who exactly) Where would the video/computer
game industry be if he had? 

It's overbroad, and collectibles, cards included, have been around for
ages. I played a simple game as a kid with "collectible" cards that had
pictures and technical stats of cars and such.

>      My personal feeling is that it is certainly ethically wrong to
fully
> copy one system and just change it to a new setting.	This may still
be a
> violation of US copyright law since it may be imposible to completely
copy
> a system of rules without copying most of the feel, but it certainly
seems
> to allow a mix and match of ideas from different games and new ideas.

The copyrightability of "look&feel" is still suspect, cases have gone
either way, and US Supreme Court drew up a stalemate in the
Lotus-Borland
case. An important snippet from the Apple-Micro$oft ruling:

"In his August 7th opinion Judge Walker carefully parsed the remaining
10
features of the Macintosh interface and held almost none of them to be
protectible by copyright law. Almost every element was found to be an
idea, to flow naturally from an idea, to be unoriginal to Apple
(copyright
protection is limited to original expression), or to be the only, or one
of very few, ways to express an idea."
 
>      However, just because some thing is legal doesn't keep you from
> defending your right to do so in court.  This keeps many people
> honest(ethically at least) here in the states, since we can't afford
to go
> to court even if we won.

Unfortunately, I think it more often works the other way. A big company
with plenty of cash threatens to sue and a smaller company yields simply
because they couldn't afford to go to court. Ironically, WotC was
*almost*
killed this way before they struck gold with Magic.

>      I don't know how much of this applies to International Copyright
Law,
> but I figured it was relevant to the topic.  

In general, copyright law is one big mess.

-- 
maxxon@swob.dna.fi (Mikko Kurki-Suonio) 	   | A pig who doesn't
fly
+358 50 5596411 GSM +358 9 80926 78/FAX 81/Voice   | is just an ordinary
pig.
Maininkitie 3C14 02320 ESPOO FINLAND | Hate me?    |	      - Porco
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