Author: Reinhard Scharnagl
Date: 10:52:42 06/18/04
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On June 18, 2004 at 13:38:31, Tord Romstad wrote: >On June 18, 2004 at 11:49:19, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote: > >>Tord, I see this slightly different. The one starting position has to be >>avoided, not only at the starting position, but also (without practical >>effect) within the game at any time. Therefore 48000-1 positions will do. >>But (one has to ask a lawer), the Gothic Chess starting position seems to >>be patented as a starting position, not as a position which might occur >>within a Capablanca Random Chess based game. But for to avoid silly >>sophisticated troubles, let have it totally forbidden. > >Clever solution, but the following quote from an e-mail sent to me by >Ed earlier today indicates that the situation is more complicated than >I thought: > > (...) a referrendum has been handed down by the Appellate Court of > Pennsylvania stating that any re-arrangment of a different starting > position so as to "intersect the set of playable positions normally > arrived at via the Gothic Chess starting arrangement" is an > infringement on the patent without the procurement of a license. > >It seems to me that this leaves only two options for the engine developer: I am not knowing yet whether that would be nonsense or not. >a) Pay the license fee. I always tried to make clear that I am of course willing to pay a fee for a license with calculatable conditions. But I am not willing to pay the fees for the end users. That should he manage himself, because otherwise it is not possible handling to distribute FreeWare or ShareWare programs. >b) Stay away from everything remotely resembling Capablanca's chess. If Ed could develop sympathies for solution 2 and would give green light for such an approach, it would help all of us. In other case I have no idea how to handle the GC license problem responsibly. >Tord Regards, Reinhard.
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