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Subject: Re: Unauthorized use of Rebel books

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:44:55 05/01/02

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On May 01, 2002 at 01:49:48, Peter McKenzie wrote:

><snip>
>>>And you cannot copyright a "collection" of games.  For example, say someone
>>>published a book (actual paperback book) with 300 Fischer games (no comments,
>>>nothing.  Just the games.) and was selling this book for $50.  And then someone
>>>else came along and published a book with the same exact 300 games, (in a
>>>different cover and style) for $25.  There is *NOTHING* that first person can
>>>do.  The Fischer games do NOT belong to him.
>>
>>Sorry, but this is wrong.  IE I can _definitely_ copyright a collection such
>>as "Fischer's games where he used the theme 'xxxxx' to break through".  All
>>that copyright law requires is that I do some sort of "work" in putting the
>>collection together.  Just filtering all of Fischer's games won't fly.  But
>>"Fischer's 100 greatest games" is definitely copyrightable as that is a subset
>>of all the games he played and it required work/effort on my part to extract
>>just the games I thought important or related...
>
>Now you've got me curious ... isn't there a file distributed with winboard which
>contains Fischer's 60 Memorable Games?  Ie. the same games that are in the
>famous book of the same name?

I don't know.  If it is combined with other stuff then I don't see how it
would be a problem.  IE it is _the_ "collection" that is somehow unique.  But
someone spent some time choosing those games from all the games he played.  It
would seem that effort is protected, IMHO...

>
>Is Tim Mann breaking copyright?  Or perhaps he got permission from the
>publisher?  (this seems unlikely since they recently republished the book)
>
>Also, what about test suites such as WAC which originated from a Fred Reinfeld
>book I think.
>
>Peter

Good question...  I suspect that could definitely be a problem since each
position and solution represents a lot of work...



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