[SJ cDave]

Too Long; Didn't Read version: Hahaha Loony Labs patented Chrononauts.

Brief (and probably wildly inaccurate) introduction to Intellectual Property.

There is no law regarding Intellectual Property. What there are are laws on Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents.

Copyright law relates to the right of an author to control how their work is reproduced.
Trademark law relates the right of a producer to have the sole use of certain words and phrases, to prevent consumers being confused by a rival.
Patent law relates to the right to prevent other producers from making your design.

In most cases these are time limited rights, originally developed to ensure that people were rewarded for their creative labours, and encouraged to continue.

Rather fantastically, when Lego's last patent ran out, Mega blocks started making compatible bricks, and after lots of law suits, were proved to allowed to do so.

Right, what was my point again?

The "deal" for patents is that you get exclusive rights to sell something for 20 years, in exchange for telling world how to make it.

In pharmaceutical companies (which do have a lot of shady practices, but that's another rant), that means that they get to charge higher than cost of manufacture prices in order to cover the costs of the spending years perusing clinical trials to ensure that a new drug is effective and safe, and the costs of the many which fail these tests.

Um, did I even have a point?

Biddle spotted a new Back to Future Card Game, and I just noticed that the press release claims that it uses a patented game mechanic. I looked, and yes, they do indeed own several patents.

Firstly I thought this was daft. It's not a physical thing. It's game mechanism. There are very good reasons why ideas are not covered by IP law, only implementations of them.

Then I thought that their effort in designing and playtesting the game deservers reward.

But then I thought what happens in 10 years when the patent runs out? Do you think they wouldn't sue anyone who made their own versions of Chrononauts under copyright laws?

So to conclude, by swerving violently off at a tangent.

Can anyone think of any games over 20 years old that would be fun to try and extend?

[Joinee Hathorn]

Not exactly inaccurate, just not complete! There is also design rights, which are a bit confusing, but basically cover you for 10 to 15 years... depending on the situation. One or two other rights exist if you have an idea and care to investigate. The UKIPO has a pretty useful website.

So anyway, games...

Well I think that there is a great deal of scope to extend games like Monopoly, and the Game of Life by producing your own action cards. Or producing your own Trivial Pursuit cards. What would be neat is to produce a range of cards that means you get to play 2 board games simultaneously and have them interact.

The only trouble I see with all of these is working out a plan which means they are still fun and playable.

[Joinee Smith]

Hasbro has already beaten me to it with New Mouse Trap





Jason

[Joinee Hathorn]

Surely there should bit a bit where the mouse craps in the kitchen cupboard and eats through the cereal box...

[SJ cDave]

Joinee Hathorn, on 08 September 2010 - 02:58 PM, said:

Not exactly inaccurate, just not complete!

Oh, I could waffle on for hours on this sort of thing

Joinee Hathorn, on 08 September 2010 - 02:58 PM, said:

There is also design rights, which are a bit confusing, but basically cover you for 10 to 15 years... depending on the situation. One or two other rights exist if you have an idea and care to investigate. The UKIPO has a pretty useful website.

Ta. I don't know a lot about design rights. New area to geek up on.

Anyhoo, if you are interested in this sort of thing the Law Clanger has done a lot of research into this area. He did a study on the imapct of IP on 3D printers, and it's nowhere as clearcut as the impact that cheap home CD burners had.

Joinee Hathorn, on 08 September 2010 - 02:58 PM, said:

So anyway, games...

I think there's nothing stopping you making your own monopoly clone you know. So long as you don't try and pass it off as Hasbro's work.

[Joinee Hathorn]

Crazy Dave, on 08 September 2010 - 04:40 PM, said:

I think there's nothing stopping you making your own monopoly clone you know. So long as you don't try and pass it off as Hasbro's work.

I was thinking more of adding to the existing rather than trying to replace. The problem with 'copying' is you either have sell it cheaper or do it better... and with something like monopoly, I doubt they'd have had a monopoly on much of the game anyway... I'm presuming you can't patent rolling the dice and moving your counter along and reading the relevant card... although buying a property might be an IP mechanism... you could add in having to deal with several crappy estate agents and then a complicated chain... but I'm not sure many would class that as fun!

edit for sense.

This post has been edited by Joinee Hathorn: 08 September 2010 - 05:02 PM

[Gaz]

Connect 5

[Joinee Hathorn]

Well I'm guessing the board has to be bigger... but I've tried playing connect 5 many times and it's really quite a challenge.

[SJ cDave]

Joinee Hathorn, on 08 September 2010 - 05:28 PM, said:

Well I'm guessing the board has to be bigger... but I've tried playing connect 5 many times and it's really quite a challenge.

I tried to play 3D noughts and crosses once. That was a bit odd.

[SJ cDave]

Brilliant quote on why software patents are not such a good idea:

Quote

Patent law provides to inventors an exclusive right to new technology in return for publication of the technology. This is not appropriate for industries such as software development in which innovations occur rapidly, can be made without a substantial capital investment, and tend to be creative combinations of previously-known techniques.

Ironically from someone who's changed his mind, and is now suing Google.

[Joinee Hathorn]

Is software patentable in the US? I believe it is only copyrightable in the UK, so you can basically copy the idea but not the code. I could well be wrong as if you can patent a game 'mechanism' I see no reason you couldn't patent a software one.

[SJ cDave]

Joinee Hathorn, on 10 September 2010 - 10:08 AM, said:

Is software patentable in the US? I believe it is only copyrightable in the UK, so you can basically copy the idea but not the code. I could well be wrong as if you can patent a game 'mechanism' I see no reason you couldn't patent a software one.

Software, and business processes, are (mostly) not patentable in the UK.

The game mechanism was patented in the US as well.

[Joinee Hathorn]

So unless it is covered by copyright or design rights, we can happily copy these games for UK distribution...?

[SJ cDave]

Joinee Hathorn, on 10 September 2010 - 11:14 AM, said:

So unless it is covered by copyright or design rights, we can happily copy these games for UK distribution...?

No. The title's are probably trademarked

(As the makers of Anti-Monopoly found out.)

This post has been edited by Crazy Dave: 10 September 2010 - 11:21 AM