Protecting your game from "Add-ons" ?

The "look and feel" of a product is captured in two ways.

One is by copyrighting the pure art and layout. The other is to claim the "look and feel" of the card as "trade dress". Such trade dress may implicate trademark law in some instances if it causes consumer confusion regarding your product.

At the same time, however, some basic elements of your game may be so specifically functional in nature, to convey the plain elements of your rules, that they may be held to be uncopyrightable.

Check out the case law involving Lotus and Borland. I suspect some parts of the "look and feel" of a game will be held to be purely functional in nature, just as some elements of user interfaces would be.

Patents can give you some additional protections in some instances against add-ons, if the add-ons implicate your patent.

In general, if the courts handle add-ons appropriately they should normally be quite lawful, provided that they don't tread too much on copyrights and trademarks. Were add-ons held to be unlawful, then it would instantly stifle development in the computer industry and in dozens of other areas of manufacturing. It would lead instantly to massive increase in market power for some firms, and might tend to violate the intents of anti-trust laws.

In general, one way to deter people from add-ons is to make sure they are lawfully handling your trademarks. If someone puts a small compatibility designation on their product that's probably lawful. If they put a huge copy of your logo and try to confuse folks into thinking you've licensed this particular product then that's unlawful. Aggressive defense of your trademarks along with cease and desist letters will deter a lot of people.

But do you really want to deter people from ever adding onto your products? Frequently, the best selling products have a lot of add-ons to them. Unless you were planning on releasing a competing product to a specific add-on, an add-on my enhance the value of your product far more than it ever detracts from your market share.

That is a guiding force behind a lot of home video game machines, and behind the Open Gaming movement in the RPG industry.

A better, friendlier way to shape add-ons, without stopping them is to come up with a free (or cheap), easy-to-use trademark and copyright license which gives people certain powers in exchange for giving up some of their "fair use" privileges regarding your profits. Lots of people will probably end up using such a license.

The d20 system trademark license gives you additional cool rights (putting a big bold "d20 logo" on your product) in exchange for a number of restraints on things that would normally be "fair use".

Says who? Tons of games are almost carbon copies of D&D since the early days. People threaten lawsuits, but most of the leverage there comes from fear and from potential trademark violations.

The threat is not that it's illegal, but that bigger corporations will threaten you with suits and have deep enough pockets to drive you into bankruptcy even if you are doing something legal.

The only reason RPGs are dangerous to make add-ons for is because you have to make sure you separate the creative expression from the mechanics, and there's a lot of creative expression tacked on top of mechanics in a role-playing game. I promise you that you could make RPGs all day long that had a set of 3 physical stats, 3 mental stats, and skill levels that were added to a d20 roll and compared to a target number.

You'd start bouncing into some areas of creative expression by listing some skills, powers, etc. unless you can establish that the references are scenes a faire instead of copyrightable expression.

So -- it's possible to build a system that leverages the same mechanics and is free of copyright infringement. The problem will be is that such add-ons will probably have to rely upon new powers and abilities mostly to avoid making the conversions clumsy.

Part of what I take issue with here may be a semantic issue. It may depend on what you mean by "compatible". Arguably something can be mechanically compatible but devoid of compatible terminology, making it a cinch to pick up by a player of game X, but perhaps hard to translate on the fly during play.

Rules aren't copyrightable. You can make derivative versions of mechanics all day long and not violate copyright as long as you don't appropriate the creative expression of those rules. The simplest mechanical expression of those rules is not copyrightable.

Our federal circuit even has a case upholding VERBATIM copying of the rules for a mail in sweepstakes contest as a precedential case.

To receive copyright protection, the work has to be copyrightable. And that copyright protection only then extends to the portions of the work which are copyrightable.

Absolutely untrue.

Copyright law states very explicitly that in a derivative work your value added portions are, by default, your own. Only where they are so inextricably merged with originally copyrighted material would there be any loss of ownership for your value added portions. Now where your work is so thoroughly tainted with the copyright of another that it is impossible to easily "filter" the elements you have added from the elements that another has added would you lose any ownership rights if you had an unlicensed work. In a licensed work, if it didn't specify otherwise you might not maintain copyright over the unfilterable sections or you might retain joint copyrights.

It's time to start citing some case law to back up your interpretations, or perhaps we are more in agreement than I think if you offer some clarifications about what you means regarding "compatible RPGs" etc.

You act like compatibility is impossible under U.S. copyright law, in which case the entire software industry would shut down tomorrow except for a few companies who own the operating systems.

This is just not how the law works.

I believe this is false. If you have borrowed NONE of their creative expression then as long as you don't copy their trade dress then you are fine. Trade dress could implicate both copyright and trademark laws. But the fact that you have trivia questions in a variety of categories is probably going to come down to pure mechanics and that's the area where patents take over, not copyrights.

Since, by your own admission, mechanics can't be copyrightable, there is nothing that prevents you from making products which are mechanically compatible provided that you don't appropriate the creative expression that goes beyond the pure rules. RPGs are dangerous ground, but only because the fine line between mechanics and expression is more blurred there.

But add-ons are only stopped by copyright law where they appropriate copyrighted material.

Unless patented all mechanics are in the public domain, and no matter how complicated your game is, once it is whittled down to the core mechanics and stripped of trade dress it is only protectable via patent.

Who has trademarked the name "game" and in what context?

Again, it's time to see some caselaw citations to back up this stuff. Most of the dangerous zone with compatibility declaration stems not from copyright, but from patent and trademark.

The only case I can think of that implicated add-ons and copyright law was a horribly decided 9th circuit decision involving Duke Nuke 'Em. The judges conflated trademark law and copyright law erroneously. The defendants were guilty of trademark and copyright law, but not some of the reasoning in that case was fundamentally flawed and showed a lack of understanding of computer programming and technology. Even in that case, the defendants grossly violated copyright law (if I remember the add-on in question) using images of Duke Nuke 'Em and broadly displayed the Duke Nuke 'Em name so prominently that end users would readily be confused as to the trademark and licensing status of the product. So gross violations combined with some poor analysis represents the only case I'm aware of where something that was purely compatible was held to be a copyright violation.

All the other add-on cases involve computer software where the add-ons do not merely exist as purely compatible product sharing only minimal levels of compatibility, but where the add-on manufacturer got his hands on code of the original software/hardware manufacturer and grossly appropriated huge chunks of copyrighted code instead of reverse engineering the thing.

Purely functional code is not copyrightable, but where there is more freedom of expression and arrangement computer code becomes copyrightable and the add-on cases I'm aware of all involve substantial copyright violations via code appropriation.

I'll be happy to admit I'm mistaken if you can show a lot of substantive case law to support your opinions or clarify your stances.

Rules themselves, the pure expression of the idea in its simplest form as a description of a process stripped of all decorative and novel trappings of language are uncopyrightable entirely.

Certain expressions of rules are copyrightable if sufficiently adorned with creative language that goes beyond the simplest expression of the rules process itself.

Thats a very different animal.

No, it's not. It landed the purported infringer in court. The supposed infringer won. They won based on exactly the premise I have cited above. I have noted explicitly that the expression associated with RPG rules incorporates both creative expression and a simple expression of the rules themselves. The rules themselves, in their simplest form, are not copyrightable, regardless of the type of game. The unique expression associated with the rules probably is copyrightable. The mechanics are the process. The rules, in their simplest form, are merely textual statements of the mechanics. Additional expression tacked on to the rules can provide interesting names or descriptions of things in the game which go beyond pure rules themselves.

You consider a rule instantly copyrightable. I view an expressed rule as containing some uncopyrightable language and some potentially copyrightable language. They can generally be distinguished from each other.

"Roll a d20 and compare it to your target number."

That is a rule. It has no copyrightable value at all. The terms "d20" and "target number" are so commonplace in the gaming industry that they can hardly be called unique expression. The statement is the simplest form of expression of the rule, and thus is indistinguishable from the rule itself and is therefore uncopyrightable.

Consider Monopoly: "When you land on the Xth space on the board draw a card from the pile of cards which has the name of that space printed on the back of those cards. Then perform the functions listed on the card you just drew."

That's the simplest statement of the rules. It is uncopyrightable. If it has any copyrightability at all it is of the thinnest sort, and even a slight rewording and the rule can be ported to 40 other games.

The following has copyrightable elements: "Monopoly features cards called 'Community Chest', representing contributions that you and the other players must make to the City or which the City will occasionally make to you. Whenever a die roll moves you onto a 'Community Chest' space draw a card from the 'Community Chest' pile and do what it says."

That statement has copyrightable elements in it that go beyond the pure statement of the underlying rules. To have a similar game you need not have 'Community Chest', and so 'Community Chest' may not be a mechanical element. It may be a creative, decorative trapping in the game, the description thereof is copyrightable.

I've said elsewhere that you have to banish the trappings of the game from the core rules themselves. Once you've done that, you check the structure. If the structure of the presentation is particularly novel you have to come up with your own structure. At that point, you make sure that everything is in the simplest language possible. That stuff can be ported even if it is word-for-word the same as in AD&D.

Where the structure is novel, where the trappings and decorative or novel language are still attached to the descriptions of the rules, then all those things will be copyrightable.

And if you did what I said above, you don't lose the court battle. You may settle out of court to avoid bankruptcy since any big dog can drive you in bankruptcy at will even if you are right.

Again, in some cases, changing the language may not be necessary. It depends on the sentence and rule in question. In general, changing the language is the safest, but it is not mandatory for every sentence.

The point you made above makes my basic point. Were rules copyrightable you could not merely paraphrase them with different language without triggering infringement. That you can paraphrase them means that the rules themselves are uncopyrightable once they are stripped of their trappings.

Rules stripped of trappings rarely have any copyrightability except for the thinnest layer of their verbatim expression and the doctrine of merger can strip that copyright protection away in some instances.

I have the case. They had a license and they committed breaches of contract, most of which were small enough that the contract was not a material breach by the court. They sold their product line to TSR who cancelled it. Mayfair didn't cancel it.

TSR had a policy of taking people to court and buying them out later to get rid of their problems.

Only sometimes. Again, I think you are debating semantics with me and seem to be unaware of it. You are attaching special signficance to distinctions between rules and mechanics. A description of the mechanic is a rule. That particular description is not always copyrightable. Sometimes it is, but only if the description is particularly novel.

That's a patent case, not a copyright case. Copyright covers verbatim expression of ideas and doesn't require that the idea be unique.

I'm posting this in two threads...

Dude, I'm asking again for case law citations instead of wild speculation.  Where the rules of a game are expressed in either the simplest fashion possible (so that they coincide with a simple statement of the rule itself) then the doctrine of merger controls.

Two federal circuits have ruled on this.  My circuit, the 1st Circuit, had a case which involved almost verbatim copying of rules and that was held to be lawful:

Morrissey v. Proctor and Gamble
http://www.law.uconn.edu/homes/swilf/ip/cases/morrissey.htm

The 9th Circuit has a case discussing the applicability of the doctrine of merger regarding the expression of game rules and the copyrightability of said expression:

Allen v. Academic Games
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/cases/allen_vs_academicgam...

The principles of the uncopyrightability of purely functional elements of a work were established some time back by the Supreme Court:

Baker v. Selden
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=101&invol=...

Most video game cases (except a very poorly constructed decision involving the Duke Nuke 'Em game out of the 9th circuit) posit that there are uncopyrightable portions of computer code (which are purely functional and can be copied at the drop of a hat) and there are portions of computer code which are more creative.  The underlying method is not copyrightable and an alternate expression of the algorithms will generally pass a test of non-derivation, but a wholesale porting of verbatim expression from a program where that expression is only one of many ways of stating the same algorithm will result in copyright infringement.

The U.S. Copyright Office says this:

"The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Some 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. "

Now, to a layman it may seem that there's a paradox in the above paragraph -- you can make another game based on the same exact principles but the rules may be copyrightable.  Allen v. Academic games explains this distinction well.  Where the expression of the rules coincides with the rules a legal doctrine of "merger" is invoked, and since mechanics aren't copyrightable, the expression of the mechanics aren't copyrightable.  Morrissey teaches us that the primary means we use to determine whether a rule is copyrightable is whether there are a variety of novel ways to express the same thing.  If there aren't, then copying the single most obvious method to say something does not result in copyright infringement.  When there are a lot of different ways of expressing things and you copy somebody else's expression (which was not necessarily the simplest most obvious statement of the rules in question) then that expression may have novel copyrightable content and you may be infringing on copyright. In the same vein, while the Copyright office lists game boards as potentially eligible for copyright, there must be copyrightable matter to be protectable. A Go-style grid or a checkerboard patter will be insufficient to establish copyrightability unless they have particularly unusual background patterns, etc. so as to make them a novel form of expression.

Re: Mayfair -- you said you should have a license. They DID HAVE A LICENSE. That's why they went to court with TSR in one case over a breach of the license. They had agreed to do certain things with their compatibility declarations and failed to do so. The license is, in part, what caused them to be dragged into court. In the end, Mayfair was found to have breached their license with TSR in numerous small ways, but had generally self-corrected most breaches and none of which caused TSR sufficient harm to terminate the contract. Eventually the Role Aids product line in question was sold to TSR to end the spat once and for all.

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/cases/tsr_vs_mayfair.html

This page has a good overview of this area of caselaw:
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/supplements.html

Sliced down to their purest forms and simplest method of explanation rules are not copyrightable, particularly if expressed with any slight twist of expression compared to the original statement of the rules. Now the trappings associated with a rule may be distinct from the rule itself. Having a space that makes you draw a card with a particular function is a rule. Calling it "Community Chest" may be sufficiently creative so as to grant that particular expression of a rule copyrightability.

A lot of my reading of the case law is informed by the doctrine of merger. If the rule is so stated as to be merely a description of a process, free from all trappings, then it is uncopyrightable. When the rule is a novel expression, one of many ways to state the idea in question, then some elements of that expression of the rule becomes copyrightable.

It is incorrect to say that all expressions of all rules are copyrightable. The underlying rules themselves, expressed in simplest form are not copyrightable. Novelty of expression and organization defines copyright, and that expression must be distinguishable from writing down the steps of a process in the most logical order and simplest language.

For this reason an individual recipe is never copyrightable except for the parts which involve creative expression instead of slavish, step-by-step listing of the requirements and the process. The only reason that a recipe book is copyrightable is:

a) it probably contains non-recipe content (like food commentaries, etc.)

b) it probably contains some parts on food preparation which are elaborate enough to be more than purely functional speech

c) the selection and organization of the dishes in the book reflect opinions and preferences of the author and so when sufficient quantity of dishes are copied infringement may occur based on copying the selection of dishes

The correct statement is to say that when a description of a rule exceeds the bare minimum requirement for simplistic statement of the core ideas involved with the method of play then the rules expression frees itself from the doctrine of merger and begins to take on copyrightable content.

The court in Allen v. Academic Games said the following:

[6] This doctrine of merger is particularly applicable with respect to games "since they consist of abstract rules and play ideas." Midway Mfg. Co. v. Bandai-America, Inc., 546 F.Supp. 125, 148 (D.N.J. 1982); see also Anti-Monopoly, Inc. v. General Mills Fun Group, 611 F.2d 296, 300 n.1. (9th Cir. 1979). A similar logic has been applied to rules of a contest where most subsequent expressions of an idea of a rule are likely to appear similar to the words of a related rule. See Morrissey v. Proctor & Gamble Co., 379 F.2d 675, 678-79 (1st Cir. 1967); Affiliated Hospital Products, Inc. v. Merdel Game Mfg. Co., 513 F.2d 1183, 1188-89 (2nd Cir. 1975).

Here, Allen has not shown that it is possible to distinguish the expression of the rules of his game manuals from the idea of the rules themselves.

Whose misunderstanding, mine or yours? Morrissey involved the copying of a "rule". Allen talks about the copying of "rules" and distinguishes the "expression" of a rule from the underlying "rule" itself.

You are drawing arbitrary distinctions between mechanics and rules. They are the effectively the same. A rule is as much an idea as a mechanic. Rules need not be written into fixed form. They can be passed down through oral tradition (i.e., explained verbally to your friends and family).

A rule is not some industry standard catch phrase for "a written form of a mechanic." "Rules" may be, in the gaming industry, sometimes a word meant to imply "rulebook", and therein it may take on the context of the written word. However, realize that I can speak the rules of a game aloud to you. I can think about rules. Rules are simply a specific class of idea.

This is the reason the U.S. copyright office notes that the "the TEXT MATTER DESCRIBING the rules of the game... may be registrable". The rule is a mechanic. To debate that point further is to ignore the original question and to debate semantics (which gets neither of us anywhere), and semantic usages which are not commonly used in some of the precedential decisions (which rely on the term "rules" frequently).

The text describing the rule may be registrable, but it lacks copyrightability in the case where the text is merely the single most obvious expression of that rule in a fixed form.

Morrissey is based, in some ways on the notions of Baker -- if the speech or pictorial elements are purely functional and the creativity is embedded in the function and not in the presentation or articulation of that function, then the elements are uncopyrightable. Where there are myriad ways to say or display the same thing, then the vast multiplicity of possible forms creates copyrightability in the selection and presentation of some particular form.

The alleged infringer copied a "RULE" almost verbatim, it landed him in court, and he won.

Actually the case involved the copying of a "rule".

No, I'm saying fantastically more than this. Either you aren't reading it, I'm not explaining it well, or it's going over your head. I can't tell who is at fault for the misunderstanding or whether it's just the medium of interaction which is at fault.

A game is a set of rules that may describe those rules in purely functional terms (almost like a recipe), but it is more than that. If, like a simple recipe, the most bare bones form of the rules simply tells you what you need to play and in very simple direct language tell you the exact process of playing the game then the expression used to describe the rules is said to be "merged" with the rules themselves and the expression becomes uncopyrightable. The more trappings, decorations, novelty, originality of structure, pictures, renditions, formatting, etc. that you provide the more you generate copyrightable expression, for in those elements the creativity of expression (rather than functional creativity of process design) copy out, and it is expression that is copyrightable.

It is the novel expression of the rule and the surrounding elements of the game that are copyrightable. A rules set, stripped down to its most bare state generally has no copyrightable elements. It is a process description, and unless the description is handled in a novel fashion there is no copyrightability. Were the description of a process, handled in a direct way, to become copyrightable, then copyrights (which last a long time) would subsume the role of patents (which last a short time) and this would upset the notions of IP protections we have in this country.

Most rules stripped to their bare bones, if they have any copyrightability it is ONLY against verbatim copying of huge sections of them. Even in that case, a minor revision and restructuring and all the copyrightable elements are immediately discarded. So this is not the same level of copyright protection normally offered creative expression.

Who is talking about sales? You. Only you. I'm arguing points of law. I'm suggesting what I believe to be legal.

You strip the game down to that level to identify what you can take. Then you add your own materials on top of it.

Porting the bare bones mechanics is entirely legal. If there's even a thread of copyrightability left in that expression, a slight restructuring or revision of the text annihilates it instantly. That's all I'm saying.

You are setting up straw men to have a debate with yourself, because I'm not raising these points.

Have you read Sega v. Accolade (where Accolade's compatible games are deemed lawful precisely because they leveraged only the compatibility layer of the system, which was uncopyrightable)?

http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/sega_v_accolade_977f2d1510_decision.html

Compare your claims that compatible game add-ons practically have to always be licensed and will rarely make money with the fact that Accolade won, sold lots of games, and the court had the following to say:

Accolade made a business decision to LAWFULLY make COMPATIBLE ADD-ONS to the Sega game console, advertised them as such, and made money. Accolade rejected the licensing options. They ended up in court. They won.

Galoob v. Nintendo (Galoob's Game Genie Add-on product found to be non-infringing) I think was also a successful add-on.

Connextix had a similar decision in their favor for an add-on.

Look up Atari v. Nintendo and you'll see that that was decided against the supposed infringing party because they, through surreptitious means, acquired copies of Nintendo's code, then included large sections of it which had enough creative expression in form and structure so as to render the code sections copyrightable.

In Landsberg v. Scrabble, 736 F.2d 485, 9th Cir. 1984 the appeals court found that Landsberg's strategy guide to playing Scrabble was appropriated by Scrabble's manufacturer and incorporated in lightly paraphrased form in a substantially similar work, but that there was no copyright infringement. Two years later Landsberg won damages but because of a breach of contract, not because of copyright infringement.

Clearly, if handled appropriately, a compatible game can borrow uncopyrightable elements and make not only a compatible game but games with express compatibility declarations on the packages. If you blow the handling of this you'll end up in a giant morass of copyright and trademark violations and you will lose your shorts. If you are cautious and savvy you can't be free and clear legally. You may still end up in court, but if you get a smart judge you'll win your case.

Gee, you mean like the very successful Companion Games add-ons for Star Fleet Battles. Companion Games got a cease and desist letter from Paramount and then politely informed Paramount that they didn't have a bloodly leg to stand on legally. Paramount backed down, never went to court, and later Companion Games even got licenses for their non-Star Fleet Battles games from Paramount.

See the video game case law.

You sometimes will end up in court anyway even if you'll win. People don't always like you to make add-ons. But if most add-ons were copyright infringement, then the computer industry and many other industries would immediately come to a screeching stop in terms of development, because copyright would gain as much or more power as the patent for some industries.

Mine too. That's why I've cited highly successful add-ons above.

Dude, a contest, video games, word games, and strategy guides for board games. I've cited case law from all over the place.

Believe what you want. You've cited a grand total of nothing to support your opinions. You have even drawn faulty conclusions from the Mayfair case.

I may not change your opinion, but I think you are obfuscating what most of the case law says.

I don't care personally about winning a debate so much, but you are effectively telling people on a game design board that there's no way they can reasonably make add-on games without violating the law, and that is simply not true.

False. Titles, short phrases, expression which merges with merely the pure statement of a concept, etc. all are uncopyrightable.

There is a reason we have the public domain. Some text is not copyrightable. In addition to old text from the early 1900s and earlier, the public domain includes all pure statements of fact (unless said statements are made with with a modicum of original novelty and authorship, or otherwise involve a unique selection pattern and/or presentation pattern of the data), short phrases, titles, individual recipes (excepting the parts of the recipe which are not pure process descriptions), bare bones descriptions of processes, scenes a faire, etc.

A copyright's protections extend only to the copyrightable elements within a copyrighted work. This is the reason that research data that is gathered through the "sweat of the brow" and reported en masse is not generally copyrightable unless there's something novel about its expression or presentation.

A copyright is not some universal shield that can be attached to any word or group of words. It is a legal concept designed to allow an author economic benefit for his original works of authorship. However, it does not extend to any part of the work that is purely in the public domain (from a copyright law perspective).

Do you realize that you can copyright an entire compilation of Shakespeare's poems? Your copyright will NOT protect the poems. Just your selection, ordering, additional commentary, presentation, etc. of the poems.

Moral? Not everything in a work bearing a copyright enjoys copyright protections. A copyrightable work can generally be filtered into copyright protected and uncopyrightable elements.

Moreover, the U.S. Copyright Office does not scrutinize the content of submissions to them. I can probably get copyright registrations on largely uncopyrightable stuff all day from the officeif I want to blow some money. Copyrights aren't sent through any patent-like approval search.

Mechanics are a form of intellectual property. They are patentable. Re: Magic the Gathering, the reason you see no Magic expansion is not because of the way copyright law works. It's because the game is patented and WotC's not letting anybody in the door to produce Magic cards yet.

I half-expect that without a patent for Magic there would be compatible add-ons. You'd have to give the cards a new trade dress, but you could probably even leverage the color scheme. The color scheme may have copyrightable elements, but honestly the fact that:

a) white is associated with angels, holy men, and unicorns

b) black is associated with death, the night, and evil things

c) green is associated with nature in all its splendor and plants

d) red is associated with fire, blood, and battle

e) blue is associated with the sky and water

These notions are probably uncopyrightable scenes a faire. The special mana icons would be copyrightable, but colored squares containing the same information might not be.

So WotC's patent protects WotC.

That, and even if WotC's patent expired and somebody found a way to make add-ons which didn't use their trade dress, and even if, in that case, WotC didn't have a legal leg to stand on, the lawyers in their parent corporation would try to drive you into bankruptcy to avoid letting you produce add-on games.

That wouldn't make your usage illegal. It just means that there's some megacorp out there that doesn't care whether you are right. They care whether they can make a buck.

Copying vast tracks of rules, even if bare bones may result in copyright violation if you lift them verbatim. But more often that not the copyright protection over bare bones rules is thin to non-existent. Small sections of bare bone rules are uncopyrightable. Larger sections may, in some instance acquire paper thin copyrights, but primarily based on the fact that as you copy more and more of a bare bones rules set you are more likely to run into areas where there are many varied ways to say and organize the same things.

I am, by the way, done with this discussion, unless someone else asks a question.

This nay-saying is entirely unproductive and doesn't really do anything more than fill up a thread.

I've given people enough case law citations and background to make their own informed decisions. If you have further questions after reading that stuff, find an IP lawyer specializing in the gaming industry and pay him a few hundred dollars to explain things to you. You'll want one anyway if you are serious about protecting things from add-ons, because you'll need patent protection, trademark protection, and copyright protection.

Feel free to write your response to mine. I'm just not going to continue with a nay-saying war.

Whatever legal protection you have for your stuff, copyright, trademark, patent, etc. It still is only a real protection if you have and are willing to spend the money and the time to enforce that protection.

While done with debate, I am eager to chime in positively in support of this comment. VERY true.

Moreover, I'd encourage anyone serious about their game to register their trademarks and copyrights. You can get attorney's fees and massive statutory damages if you have registered copyrights and trademarks. No registration and then you get only actual damages out of which you have to pay your attorney. I'd guess attorneys are MUCH more likely to work on contingency where the statute explicitly provides for their fees. Registration is the first line of defense and creates a rebuttable presumption that you are the guy in control of the copyright and the trademark.

If you don't have these things registered, then you had better have deep pockets because it can get expensive very quickly.

You want to win as soon as possible. It is possible to win a lot of these cases. Many such cases can be resolved without a jury and sometimes without even going to trial, not by settlement, but by way of something called "summary judgment". If the facts are not in dispute, and only the law is in dispute, then you might be able to get summary judgment early on, making the case much less expensive.

Lastly, sometimes (if memory serves) the copyright and trademark offices will take on cases for the public interest. They are not in those cases your attorney. They represent the statutes, regulations, and the public interest, but it may help your case a lot if they get involved in one fashion or another. Normally this isn't gonna happen.

But, while there are strategies to make this cheaper, in general I agree with bitraven 100%. Normally your rights aren't worth anything if you can't defend them. And keep in mind, I kept talking about what I felt was _legally_ correct. As bitraven is pointing out effectively, you could go bankrupt long before you win your case.

So the best strategy: sell lots of games and make lots and lots of money :D

Bitraven, your comment was short, to the point, and insightful -- what the law is and isn't may well be moot if you know little about the law and have no money unless you have everything registered and can find an attorney willing to work on a contingency basis.

While I'm not particularly interested in debating whether I was right or wrong, I know I used some terms that may be unfamiliar to some on the boards. If you need clarification on a concept I presented (whether or not you agree with it), come up with a list of things needing clarification.

Then you can decide for yourself what you believe. No point in arguing for a perspective that ends up unclear to you. Then it's just an act of inadvertent thread jacking instead of a beneficial Q&A session.

And that's what folks are here to do, hopefully, to answer questions clearly.

Some of these issues are very complicated legally, and so there's only so simple they can be made, but hopefully we can clarify some areas of concern.

Now that's tougher. That has a lot to do with your financial resources. Stopping people from creating add-ons through copyright alone is tough. Much easier to do if you have the triple crown of IP law:

a) a patent
b) a trademark
c) a copyright

A copyright alone only covers certain things and not others.

Copyrights are cheap to register. Patents can get crazy expensive to certify and register if you aren't a lawyer and if your particular game requires an extensive patent search.

So, if you need help finding out what you can implement you'll need to paint a broader picture about your intents and resources. In the end, only so much implementation info can be given without a stronger knowledge of your project.