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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 19 2012 @ 12:52 PM EDT |
Anonymous is right. You can't copyright the rules themselves. Your
description of the rules, yes, but the rules themselves, no.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl10
8.html
Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or
title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any
idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing,
merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in
the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar
principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s
expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.
Material prepared in
connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient
amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter
describing the rules of the game or the pictorial matter appearing on the
gameboard or container may be registrable.
I think the core of
this ruling is that the violation was in material prepared in connection with
the game, and that it was so substantially similar that it infringed on the
expression of the game.
--nyarlathotep [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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