Re: (TFT) Re: TFT copyrights

[Bryant Berggren <voxel@theramp.net>]

At 03:21 AM 7/5/98 EDT, WarPlayer@aol.com wrote:
>> In short, game mechanics and terms aren't protected by copyright -- just
>> the exact written text & pictures of a game-related work.
>
>     This may be the letter of the law, but I doubt it would hold up 
>against a well financed legal team.  If it would, then Wizards of the 
>Coast would not have won their copyright battle against several CCG 
>publishers, and it seems from all that I have read that they have won the 
>battle.

Do you have court citations I can look up on these cases? In my experience,
intellectual property cases that haven't fit the letter of the law DON'T
"win" -- the smaller company settles out of court and it never goes to a
judge or jury. That, and it was my understanding that WotC was trying to
defend _Magic_ on *patent* grounds rather than copyright (which, again, is a
different area of law ... although their patent is rather screwy, too).

--
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to 
do nothing." -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the SoapVox at http://www.io.com/~angilas/soapvox.html

____________________________________________________________________
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Don't send
long quotations from previous messages and don't blind copy (BCC) messages
to the list. All material is owned by the author and may not be
reproduced without permission.

Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"