> woodelf > > actually, if you want to really puzzle over all of this, re-read the > copyright law on what consitutes "derivative work".
It is probably more practical to look at how judges have interpreted the copyright statutes, since the judges will look at the caselaw as much as anything when making a decision. It goes a long way towards answering your question of "what is derivative", but it also leaves a fair bit up in the air. Quite deliberately, I think. Regarding your "sequel" question, I suggest you take a look at Anderson V. Stallone, for translation into a different media type, Picket v. Prince might be useful, and regarding whether or not a game as a whole can be copyrighted when its individual elements might not, Atari Games Corp. v. Oman might be helpful. The Anderson v. Stallone case is an oft-cited example of this, where the Rocky character was used without permission to create a new work of fiction. The judge ruled that the new work was the joint property of both authors, and that neither could use the work without the permission of the other. (I don't have a link for this one, but I know Ryan has it). In the Ferdinand Pickett v. Prince case, the judge ruled that the symbol used by Prince to represent himself (a copyrighted 2-d visual artwork) could not freely be used by others to create a 3-d interpretation (in this case, a guitar). The judge ruled in favor of Prince even though the new 3-d work represented a substantial contribution of original material (converting the 2-d art into a 3-d guitar). Atari v. Oman involved the game Breakout, where it was held by the copyright office that the audio and video elements of the game were too simplistic to warrant protection. After a Supreme Court review of the Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service case (copyright of telephone books) in which the court stated that the creative input need not be particularly impressive to be worthy of protection, the court ruled that while the individual elements could not be protected on their own, the entire work as a whole contained enough creative input to deserve protection. This is also seen in the greeting card industry, where the text of a card might not deserve protection on its own but the card as a whole does. I found a great site on the net that has a lot of copyright cases summarized with comments on the implications of the decisions. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to enter into a gray area of the OGL. http://allrise.com/copyright/SubjectMatter.html also Ferdinand Pickett v. Prince: http://www.kentlaw.edu/student_orgs/jip/copy/ferdinand.htm Atari Games Corp. v. Oman http://www.lawstudents.org/copyright/cases/979F2D242.html -Brad _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
