Re: Open Transport Tycoon - if it was like freeciv
On 5/17/05, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 03:33:59PM +0200, Per Eric Ros?n wrote:
> > Let's say, if I liked the concept of TTD (which I did), and started to
> > write a "FreeTycoon" like freeciv, without using any material from TTD at
> > all, and also without requiring original TTD data for execution, how close
> > could I make it to the original *rules* and behaviour?
>
> Game rules are not copyrightable. Period. The text of the rule book is.
If the technique of broad unsupported assertion were patentable,
Andrew and Raul would be fighting it out in court. As usual, it's
fairly simple, but not _that_ simple. You have to look, not just to
the outcome of the classic "board game" cases, but to the scope of
their precedent. The wording of the rules of a typical board game is
routine given the ideas they embody, and hence large swathes of a
given rulebook tend to suffer from the "doctrine of merger" of idea
and expression. See discussion and citations in
http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1998-02/0815.html ,
particularly Allen v. Academic Games (
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9456593.html ).
However, when you are talking about a computer simulation game with
lots of individual expressive choices (such as the naming of units and
tiles, the relative costs and unit strengths, all of the little tweaks
that make for balanced gameplay), the "doctrine of merger" gets to be
a pretty shaky defense. Micro Star v. FormGen is interesting on this
score as well. If Duke Nukem MAP files, containing a bunch of numbers
specifying where walls and monsters and weapons and things are
located, "describe audiovisual displays down to the last detail", then
I think it could be said that the level of detail involved in defining
the properties of game tiles, units, etc. contributes significantly to
the description of a simulation game's "audiovisual displays".
By the way, here's the appellate decision with respect to "The Wind
Done Gone": http://laws.findlaw.com/11th/0112200opn.html . The
parodist won. The opinion is remarkable for its discourse on the
First Amendment to the US Constitution as a source of authority for
both modern notions of the idea/expression dichotomy and the "fair
use" defense against accusations of copyright infringement. Perhaps
that's part of why "fair use" -- codified in the 1976 Copyright Act,
but judicially created in the US long before -- covers commercial
speech to a greater extent in the US than in other countries. For
instance, here's Sony v. Bleem:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/9917137v2.html . Fair
use, in the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction, seems even to apply to
comparative advertising.
Cheers,
- Michael
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