From: "shogi.de" <shogi-l <at> SHOGI <dot> DE>
Date: 15 jul 2003
Subject: Copyright of game score

Hi all,
Katsutoshi Seki sent this to me instead to the SHOGI-L.
Marc

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    Hi, everyone.

Every now and then I find Japanese people discussing on the matter of
copyright of shogi game score on BBS. For example, a long discussion
has been made until recently on this page:
   http://www.af.wakwak.com/~mtmt/cgi-
bin/mibbstest.cgi?mo=p&fo=pro&tn=0030

Most of the discussion fall into the interpretation of Japanese law of
copyright, which I would not want to do on this list in English. After
all,
the interpretation of Japanese law is controversial among Japanese
because it is difficult, so how can we discuss it in English? ;)

What I would like to know is:

  Why game score of chess is not considered to be a copyrighted
material?

I googled up for a while but couldn't find a page answering this
question.

I know that in the world of chess, game score is not copyrighted and
hundreds
of thousands of game score files, maybe even millions, in pgn format is
publicly available on the internet. A lot of people analyze these games
and
make research on chess strategy, and it helped to improve the theory of
chess. However, because some people strongly insist that shogi game
score is protected by copyright and distributing the score can be
illegal
without copyright holder's consent, people are afraid of exchanging game

score.

If we get a clear answer to the above question, I think we don't have to

be afraid of such claim as exchanging the game score is illegal, and
exchange game score without any hesitation, thereby making a lot of
Japanese and international shogi fans happy.

Finally for those who can read Japanese and want to know more about
this issue, following page of Japanese shogi ML well expresses what
Japan Shogi Association thinks about this issue.
   http://bug.org/ML/shogi/onegai.txt

Best wishes,

Katsutoshi Seki
seki (at) ylug.org