Re: [piecepack] Four Seasons. (LONG)

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 02:05:31AM -0000, porter235 wrote:
> Note. There will not be a JCD 4 seasons expansion.
> 
> When Mesomorph introduced their set, I was excited along with everyone
> else. I announced that if there was interest, I would create a 4
> seasons set for the JCDpiecepack. 
> 
> Mesomorph informed me at that time that they did not approve of that,
> and that I did not have permission to do so. 
> 
> I replied informing them that I would not make use of any of their
> graphics if I was to produce a JCD 4 Seasons pack, assuming that their
> concern was with their art work, which they have worked hard on.
> 
> Once I posted the new JCD cards, Mesomorph Games has kindly informed
> me that they have trademarked 4 Seasons Expansion TM, as well are in
> the process of seeking a patent for the pawn saucers. They would like
> to keep these innovations exclusive to their Mesomorph Piecepack. 

Mesomorph has worked very hard to expand the piecepack community,
maintain the piecepack website, and so on, and I'm sure we all
appreciate it, which makes it all the more sad to hear about
Mesomorph's tactics.  It is a little surprising, too, considering
Mesomorph's bread and butter would seem to be producing high-quality
standard piecepacks, which are of course in the public domain.

It may be news to some that you _can_ make money with ideas that are
in the public domain, or open source, or Free, but you can.  Just ask
Red Hat, or more to the point, the manufacturers of Bicycle brand
standard playing cards.  Until now, I had always assumed Mesomorph saw
the wisdom of this model, and were relying on their craft and customer
service to sell their piecepacks, not the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.

I have no doubt that Mesomorph can get a patent on their pawn saucers.
They are indeed an innovative solution to the directional pawn
problem, but if the USPTO will issue a patent on _teasing a cat with a
laser pointer_ (no kidding), then it goes to show that all you really
need to get a patent is money.  If pawn saucers are patented, I
recommend that people who need directional pawns in their game merely
specify just that, perhaps suggesting piecepack pyramids as one
option.  That's what I'm going to do.

As for the trademark on the 4 Seasons Expansion, first of all, anyone
can get a trademark on anything.  Watch this: "Hoopichoo" is a
trademark of Ronald W. Hale-Evans for his series of articles on game
systems.  There.  Now I have a trademark, represented by the
superscripted letters 'TM'.  Enforcing that trademark, and getting a
_registered_ trademark (represented by the superscripted 'R' in a
circle) is quite another matter.  And costs lots of money.

Second, it sounds as if Mesomorph is confusing the idea of
trademarking the name and/or symbols of the 4 Seasons Expansion with
copyrighting or patenting the ideas, which is sort of absurd, if not
impossible.  (You can't trademark or copyright _ideas_.  With enough
money, as I said, you can patent anything.)

If Mesomorph is just trademarking the name, just call your "seasonal
expansion" something else, such as the "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
Expansion" or "SSAW" or "JCD2" or something.

If Mesomorph is trademarking the suit symbols and not just the name
(the language quoted earlier is pretty vague for what amounts to a
cease-and-desist letter, but then such letters usually make claims as
broad as possible), consider that there are already card and tile
games that use many of the same symbols -- some as well-known as Mah
Jongg:

http://home.halden.net/vkp/vkp/rules.html

Look under the section labeled "The Tiles", and you'll see that Spring
is represented by a flower, Autumn by an orange leaf, and Winter by a
snowflake, just like Mesomorph's set.

> As a result IF a new JCD set is to follow it will be one of the
> following themes (which I list here in a feeble attempt to get the
> ideas into the public domain):
> 
>   *  The 4 cardinal points (North, South, East, West)
>   *  The 4 elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) 
>   *  The 4 horsemen  (Pestilence, War, Famine, Death)

I like the four elements idea the best of the three by far.

I am not a lawyer, but I hope this perspective helps.  Don't let
IP laws get you down.  There's almost always a workaround.  If there
is no workaround in this case, I am not going to use the 4 Seasons 
Expansion in my games, and I recommend others do not do so as well.

Of course, the actual legalities aren't the whole of it; maintaining a
stable working community by not stepping on people's toes is an
important thing to consider as well.  It would be sad to see
Piecepack.org go up in a flame war, for example.

> (PS. Sorry about the duplication. The previous message has been
> deleted from the archive in accordance with Mesomorph's wishes. I was
> unaware of current copyright laws which prohibit me from quoting email
> without permission, as well has how rude it is to do so. Now when the
> search engines index this archive they will not archive any material
> posted by me for which I do not have the copyright.)

Wow!  Most of my reply above was written before I saw your second
message.  A good thing I didn't send my earlier draft, or it would
have been censored too!

I am going to shut up now for a while and let other members of the
community have their say.

Ron H-E

-- 
    Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... ... http://ron.ludism.org/
	 Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night,
Kennexions Glass Bead Game & Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/