Author: Keith Evans
Date: 13:54:17 01/08/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 08, 2004 at 09:45:58, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On January 07, 2004 at 18:29:19, Keith Evans wrote: > >>On January 07, 2004 at 13:57:31, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On January 07, 2004 at 12:43:01, Ed Trice wrote: >>> >>>>On January 07, 2004 at 12:22:50, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>>I think my attorney's original take on this still stands. You can patent the >>>>>game, but you really can't prevent someone from writing a program that _plays_ >>>>>that particular game, and then he can do with it what he wants, from selling it >>>>>or giving it away. >>>> >>>>This is very, very, very incorrect. Please acknowledge that I am advising you >>>>that all of these posts are now being logged. >>> >>> >>>Please log away. You have published the rules. I will certainly write a >>>program >>>to _play_ that game should I choose to do so, and I would not mind taking this >>>to any court you might choose. You can patent something and prevent me from >>>making and selling whatever it was you patented, but you can _not_ prevent >>>me from making one for my own use. black-letter case law applies there. >> >>Earlier you said "...then he can do with it what he wants, from selling it..." >>but now you say "... making one for my own use." Those are two different >>statements. I doubt that Ed cares about the latter. > >I don't know that either is a problem. IE "the game" is a far different thing >from "a program that _plays_ the game." IE do you think Parker Brothers could >file suit should I write a program that simply is a participant in a game of >monopoly? I don't. Writing a program to play the game has _nothing_ to do with >the actual game itself, in this context... I just wanted to point out that those two are different. Doing it privately seems analogous to modifying something that's under the GNU license. As long as you don't distribute the modified version, then I don't believe that the license comes into play. (Maybe this is a weak analogy, because if you were violating a patent related to a process, then keeping it private wouldn't really protect you.) I don't really know about patent protection on an engine, but then an engine by itself isn't going to be interesting to many people without an interface. And that's where you would likely run into trouble. Do you think that those companies making things like Stanford-opoly need to pay licensing fees? In this case I would think that Ed would want as many _engine_ writers as possible working on it without worrying about licensing agreements, and then he could be the one distributing an interface, licensing other interfaces, and selling physical gothic chess sets, etcetera. Then again maybe he gets more publicity this way - if it weren't for the patent aspect this would probably not have gotten very many posts. I think that there have been lawsuits related to Scrabble, but I don't know if it was related to patent law. There were free versions though, so there must have been some way around it. -K
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