Re: Re: Copyright issues regarding fan computer assistant program for board game.

You really venturing into waters that get quite muddy in a hurry here.

1. One of the rights of a copyright holder is to control the making of copies. Another is the making of derivative works. One sort of derivative work is doing essentially the same thing, but in a different medium. If you copy or make a derivative work of something that is copyrightable, then you would be violating the copyright holder's exclusive right to control the making of derivative works.
2. Even though rules cannot themselves be copyrighted, games can be and are copyrighted. The extent of the copyright is hard to determine, however. It is a compilation of elements and it has something that is expressive and not just method or rules. But just what is that? This is why it becomes hard to answer one of these sorts of questions even if we have all of the facts (I'm not familiar with either the game or the computer program and so cannot render any sort of judgment on the extent of copyright or infringement on mere descriptions.
3. The exact look of a board game can be copyrighted. The layout can be copyrighted. The exact text of a set of rules might be able to be copyrighted, but one runs into the merger problem -- a limited number of ways to express the particular rules. How many ways can one say "the first player roles the dice and then moves that number of squares"? (OK, the answer is infinite, but we merge things where there are limited effective and efficient ways to say the thing.) Translating a copyrighted text into another language, including a computer language, is a violation of the right to control derivative works.
4. D&D books are copyrighted. The "to hit" tables are probably copyrighted too, but maybe not. The idea of having 6 attributes determined by a role of the dice is not. The 3-18 scale for those attributes is (probably) not. And to the extent there is a coypright, one can easily create another RPG without infringing because the extent of the copyright in such a game is quite thin. You cannot tie up a genre with copyright.

Good luck.

Steve

On Aug 17, 2005, at 6:25 PM, Steve Walmsley wrote:

>> I think that it makes a big difference but I don't know anything
>> about
>>
> the copyright law in the UK. For example, in the U.S., the rules for
> playing a game are uncopyrigihtable.
>
> Thanks for the informative response. I was particularly interested
> in the
> above. Does this mean someone can produce copies of a game rulebook
> or is it
> that the method of playing a game cannot be copyright but the textual
> content of the rulebook is copyright? As a simple example, if someone
> created a rulebook which gave instructions on how to generate a
> star system
> in terms of number of planets, habitability, etc., I could create a
> program
> which generated systems according to those rules and presented the
> result to
> the user but I could not display the text from the rulebook in the
> program?
> If that is the case, could I display the tables providing the
> values to use
> and the chance of each result occuring?
>
> Steve
>
>
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-- 
Prof. Steven D. Jamar                                 vox:  202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law                       fax:  202-806-8428
2900 Van Ness Street NW                         
mailto:sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu
Washington, DC  20008      http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar

"When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow  
old, I too will live by the sea."
"That is all very well, little Alice," said her grandfather, "but  
there is a third thing you must do."
"What is that?"
"You must do something to make the world more beautiful."

from "Ms. Rumphius" by Barbara Cooney