Copyrights, and patents

Speaking here of US law, but it's very similar in most of the world:

However, practically no one will copy your game. The odds of you making any money off your game aren't great, and your odds of making substantial money are even smaller. The odds of someone copying your game and then competing with you with the exact same game and them making any money are astronomically small, unless your game is the one in (literally) 50,000 that really takes off.

To sum: copyright protects you financially from anyone copying your game. Registering your copyright provides even more protection, and is quite cheap, $35-45.

You cannot copyright a mechanic. You might be able to patent a mechanic, if it actually qualifies, but it is expensive and there's no legal precedent to show that it actually protects anything. Game play mechanic patent lawsuits have yet to be resolved in court, always being either dropped or settled out of court (if the person suing has more money than the person who would have to pay, or gets tired of paying for defense).

Almost inevitably you're going to make $3,000-6,000 more by not patenting your mechanic than by patenting it, by not having wasted that money on the expense of patenting it. In fact, saving that dollar amount could easily be the only way you make any money at all.

More, I bet that your mechanic is in some way an evolution of previous mechanics, none of which you had to pay for because none of those designers tried to protect them.

Legally, if game mechanic patents actually hold, that's how you'd keep anyone else from using it. But really, my opinion is that you should just make a good game and hope to do well with it. Make more games using the same mechanic if you want, or invent something new. If your mechanic is really that awesome and the game is really that fun, people will enjoy it, buy it, and you'll make money (assuming everything else is well-handled in the business).

If this game was patentable, the chance to apply for one has probably gone - it has been "made public" via a web page.

That is the down side of patents ... you cannot discuss the "idea" with anyone until the patent is in place, now if another designer comes up with a sword fighting mechanic ownership will come into question.

The IP Australia webpage is a goverment site that has easy to read, factual info on the different types of protection you can take.

check USPTO for USA and EPO for Europe .

If the protection info hasn't come from these pages it probably isn't true.

And dont fall for the "post something to yourself" for a date stamp - it is a crock.

um...

My apologies, I should have wrote; ...it has been made public via a web page and patented....

A sword fighting mechanic exists ... the "idea" is known. The fact that Lucas may have a better mechanic is irelevant. If it is remotely like the listed patent then he will need to get permission to use it.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7234701.html
http://patft.uspto.gov
search by patent number

Monopoly has been copied many times, I won't argue that. It, however, is different than most games because it turns out that Charles Darrow, who sold the rights to Parker Brothers way back when, had not in fact invented the game, and as such Parker Brothers (now Hasbro) was unable to defend it against cloning as they never had the rights in the first place.

On the other hand, they had no problem defending Scrabble, despite having no patent on it, as they actually owned the copyright and trademark rights.

To clarify, the challenge I'm presenting is about patent. I have never seen any court case or example where a boardgame patent stopped someone from copying a game. Copyright is plenty, and if your game is super-successful, trademark the name and likeness. Don't waste money on a patent in the name of "protection" that is entirely unnecessary.

If you want to sift through an actual case of intellectual property law as applied to a board game, there is a wealth of information in the links below. They are related to the case of Burten v. Milton Bradley Co. concerning the game Dark Tower, aka Triumph. Some summaries:

The suit was brought by two men who claimed to have presented the original concept for "Dark Tower" to Milton Bradley in the late Seventies, at which point, MB declined to pursue it. Thereafter, they claimed, MB independently developed the game based on their proposal. As part of the resolution of the lawsuit, Milton Bradley pulled the game off the market, and it was never republished.

and

In early 1981, the two inventors attended the annual two-week toy fair in New York City. There they saw the first public display of Dark Tower, Milton Bradley's new integrated electronic board game -- the first such game on the market. Burten and Coleman immediately concluded that Milton Bradley had stolen their idea and used it in creating Dark Tower. Milton Bradley denied this charge, and refused to pay any royalties. Dark Tower enjoyed great commercial success, while Triumph gathered dust instead of profits.

Burten and Coleman brought suit in Federal District Court in Rhode Island, claiming that Milton Bradley had misappropriated the trade secrets embodied in Triumph. Following a lengthy trial, a jury awarded them $737,058.10 for lost royalties.

Despite this judgement, Milton Bradley still had a powerful card to play. Based solely on the non- disclosure waiver form that Burten and Coleman had signed at Triumph's demonstration, Milton Bradley asked the court to set aside the jury's verdict. The company argued that this agreement disclaimed any relationship between the parties, and therefore precluded the establishment of a confidential relationship.

The "confidentiality" of the relationship was an essential element of Burten and Coleman's trade secret claim. The court found that without the written waiver, a confidential relationship would have existed, and Milton Bradley's behavior would have constituted a breach of that relationship. However, since the waiver did exist, the court found Milton Bradley protected from liability and set aside the jury verdict, observing that "Coleman and Burten made their bed when they eagerly affixed their signatures to the disclosure waiver form in order to induce Milton Bradley to look at their wares; they cannot sleep elsewhere."

Burten and Coleman appealed the district court's decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which reversed the district court and reinstated the jury verdict. The Court of Appeals acknowledged that a confidential relationship, which would otherwise protect a trade secret, can be defeated if both parties expressly disclaim such a relationship. However, here the court found that Milton Bradley's non-disclosure waiver agreement was not sufficiently explicit to waive a confidential relationship. The court also found that the addendum obligating Milton Bradley to pay $25,000 if it held the game for longer than 30 days that Milton Bradley had not intended to waive any claim to royalties for use of the idea. Following this decision, Milton Bradley paid Burten and Coleman the amount determined by the jury verdict.

So there is a whole new legal term for us there: Trade Secrets. As if we weren't confused enough. By the way, for those of us who can remember, $737k in the 1980's was a hell of a lot of money!
By the by, I think MB took out a patent on Dark Tower.

EDIT: They did take out a patent. See it here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/33780/Dark_Tower_-_USD270650.pdf

EDIT No2: FYI http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/20416

Sources:
http://gozips.uakron.edu/~dratler/2006tradesec/materials/burten.htm
http://www.gesmer.com/publications/article.php?ID=157
http://well-of-souls.com/tower/triumph.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Tower_(game)

Thanks Bluesea ...

At the very least your response sends a message that designers need to make sure the waiver they sign doesn't surrender their rights to future claim.

Timely given that Willie B advises the company will ask for a waiver as protection against future claims.

I'll sell you mine for less than a zillion dollars...well just less. ;)