[OT?] Copyright infringement, Scrabulous, and the GPL

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Marc Lanctot wrote:

> I'm interested in games, board games in particular, and the case with 
> Scrabulous. Scrabulous got nailed with lawsuits because they referred to 
> Scrabble and used a trademarked name attached to their product; they have now 
> renamed their service to Lexulous, but it's still the exact same game as

Hi Marc.  IANAL.  I'm a long time boardgame player[1].  My understanding 
from discussions around the boardgaming community is that games themselves 
_cannot_ be copyrighted but the rules and artwork can.  As a result it is 
possible to produce a "work alike" game as long as it doesn't look like 
the original or share the same words in the rules.

Again, IANAL but this is a topic that has been discussed in boardgaming 
circles.

> So my question is this: is it legal to implement a (say GPL'd) online game 
> which allows users to play a game whose original rules etc. are under

Quite a number of board games can be played online and often with the 
original name and artwork.  In these cases I presume permission was 
granted or they are flying underneath the radar.

[1] These days I'm mostly into German Games.  Favourite games include 
Mideast Peace, Medici, & Merchant of Venus.

Rob

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