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

> 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.

Not sure if the program is classed as a derivative work. If you wrote down a cake recipe and then I made the cake, is the cake a derivative work? Similarly, if you created a list of rules for generating a star system then I wrote a program that created a star system without ever showing the user the rules involved, is that a derivative work?

> 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.

I found the following web page as the US Copyright office http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html which seems to suggest that the rules text and pictures are copyright but not the methods and processes described by those rules. If I create something that carries out the function of the rules but does not display the rules, is that copyright? Also an interesting page on the subject at: http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/supplements.html

> 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.

The board for Starfire is a blank hex map. The program does not display a board or any rules text.

> 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.

That is useful to know.

> Good luck.

Thanks :)

Steve Received on Mon Aug 22 2005 - 21:00:00 GMT