> Jeroen Halstad
>
> Pardon the newbie jumping in here, but I think that I should
> point out that this is probably not accurate. I am not a lawyer,
> nor is this intended to be legal advice, but I am in law school
> and have a particular interest in intellectual property law.
> Rules are not protected by copyright. In my opinion, that means
> that only the author's specific expression and any graphics used
> to illustrate the rules are protected. Otherwise, by the above
> logic, only one person could write a book about variant Poker
> rules, and that'd be the end of books about Poker. If the
> similarities between the two books are limited to rules, ideas,
> and processes, then there's no infringement, IMO, no matter how
> much some would wish it to be otherwise.
To clarify, I'd like to say that I am neither a lawyer nor a law student,
but I own a very successful data warehousing & processing firm. The data I
sell comes from public sources, but once I am finished with it, it bears my
copyright under the same legal framework as a phonebook publisher. I agree
on your assessment of the theoretical accuracy of my statement, but I
disagree when it comes to putting theory into practice.
I think you'll find conflicting rulings on the issue of what does and does
not constitute a derivative work, hinging primarily on how much new material
has been injected into the new work vs. the amount of material which is
substantially similar to the original work. The statute leaves a great deal
open to interpretation, and various courts around the country have made the
best interpretation they can and arrived at quite different conclusions. I
would say that this kind of law is not unlike free speech in its subtlety
and intricacy, and the Supreme Court can't seem to get closer than 6 to 3
when voting on such issues. As a result, the judge who hears your case has
as much impact on his ruling as the law itself. One must consider these
odds when considering rewriting someone else's work.
I'm not saying that it is impossible to separate the rules from the
expression, I'm just saying that it is potentially dangerous and costly to
try to separate them from a specific work for the purpose of copying the
utility of that particular work. This is especially true when the
expression of the rules is based and tightly intertwined with a specific
fantastic universe. When you reword the rules, are you doing so in a way
that reflects that specific fantastic setting, or are you doing it in a way
that is a purely natural expression of those rules? The former could be a
problem, while the latter is clearly unencumbered.
This is an archetypal case of 'easier said than done'.
-Brad
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