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BGonline.org Forums
Copyrights and Book Positions
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Copyrights and Book Positions (Kye Hedlund)
Date: Saturday, 22 May 2010, at 10:51 p.m.
The Berne Convention is online. Nothing I read there -- or have read anywhere at any time -- convinces me that a backgammon position is copyrightable.
I've read that Robert Hübner, a German GM, tried to copyright a chess game as an artistic work produced by two artists, but a court (presumably a German court) did not agree with him. Of course a game is not a position. Historically there were assertions that a chess game was mutually owned by the two players who first played it. This article covers some of that history. As far as I know, such assertions are totally unsupported by law. My understanding is that no one owns a chess game or a chess position. But no one, as far as I know, has ever gone to court to assert ownership of a backgammon game or a backgammon position.
Over the years I've posted lots of positions from books. I'll post more in the future, no doubt. I don't seek the book authors' permission first. I figure they (or their publisher, or whoever) certainly owns their analysis, but no one owns the positions. I do always acknowledge the source (unless I forget). I refrain from posting all positions from a book at a time as a courtesy to the author, since I'd like to encourage authors to write books and readers to buy them. As far as I know, there might be an argument for copyrighting the selection and ordering of positions. Even that seems shaky. But the positions themselves? No way, seems to me. Copyright protects -- not ideas -- but the literary or artistic expression of an idea. Is a backgammon position an expression of an idea? Just asking.
I figure that if you could copyright a poker hand, you could copyright a backgammon position. Do you think you can copyright a poker hand?
IANAL.
I am not a lawyer.
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