From: "shogi.de" SHOGI DE> Date: 16 jul 2003 Subject: Re: copyright of game score On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Daniel M Toebbens wrote: > > I think that a collection of many game scores could fall under the > copyright protection for compilations and databases. That would not > protect the individual game score, though. > > I assume, that this is a situation which also applies to > chess gamescores > in most western countries. It reminds me of the telefone book > case we had > in Germany a few years ago. A company started to sell > database programs > for names, adresses and phone numbers. Telekom sued, since all the > information was copied from their phone books. They won, and when the > company resorted to having the phone books re-typed by a few thousand > chinese workers, this was also found to be illegal. > > > For a look into Japanese Copyright Law: > http://www.cric.or.jp/cric_e/clj/clj.html > > > Daniel Toebbens > yes, Daniel, but the question is how can they be sued if you just copy a few game scores without any comments, except adding your own comments. The example with the case of the german phone book doesn't fit quite right, I think. Big publishers almost everytime use "submarines" in their works. To explain: In a phone book, if you insert some contacts like "Donald Duck" or some other names that normally doesn't exist, you are able to prove afterwords that somebody has simply copied your text. Same is made with encyclopedias or dictionarys. If there are spectators nearby a shogi pro tournament, who can avoid that they remember the game score and write it down or publish them on a home page? Would be a pity if this was illegal and very bad indeed for spreading shogi. regards Marc **** visit german shogi site: http://www.shogi.de join us: http://www.shogiforum.net