copyrights (was re: TD's have leeway// Re: COTKU)

• From: kestral123 <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 19:10:46 -0000
• Message-ID: <bobhvm+jdrr_at_...>

For the record, speaking as a copyright lawyer, and since I see this 
mistake made frequently, rules (like all "facts") are not protected 
by copyright.  A particular expression of rules is protected to the 
extent that the expression has a sufficient amount of creativity to 
distinguish that expression from the underlying rules, but that's a 
very different concept from saying that the rules themselves are 
protected.  In other words, if I wanted to host a tournament, and I 
wanted to write up a set of rules that were substantively identical 
to NAQT's or CBCI's, I could do that without infringing on any 
copyrights, provided that I did not merely copy the same document 
prepared by those entities.

Also, to clarify, under the current law, the only requirement 
to "copyright" something is that it be an original work of authorship 
fixed in tangible form.  You do not need to affix a copyright notice, 
and you do not need to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office.  
Of course, there are substantive benefits to doing all of these 
things, but your ability to claim copyrights in a work are not tied 
to them.

Chris Sloan

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "R. Robert Hentzel" <topquark_at_s...> 
wrote:
> > That said, central governing bodies can get in the way. Part of 
the
> > reason (in my own opinion) that the ACF format has become so
> > widespread is that the rules for ACF are not copyrighted, like 
NAQT 
> or
> > CBI, so ACF-style tournaments can be played without having to pay 
> for
> > permission to use a certain set of rules.
> 
> I'm sorry to be late with this reply, but there have been a lot of 
> questions to be written lately. :-)
> 
> I'm sure that Stephen knows this, but NAQT's rules, while 
> copyrighted, are free for use by any team under two conditions:
> 
> 1. Teams give credit to NAQT
> 2. If teams use any rules variations, they report that to us along 
> with how they were received.
> 
> A large number of tournaments do, in fact, use NAQT rules and there 
> has never been a problem with them doing so.  There is even a 
> term, "NAQT-style," for tournaments run with NAQT rules but not 
NAQT 
> questions.
> 
> For the record, I strongly suspect that the ACF rules are 
copyrighted 
> as well and there is merely an implicit understanding that schools 
> are free to duplicate and distribute them as necessary for the 
> running of a tournament.
> 
> -- R. Robert Hentzel
> President and Chief Technical Officer,
> National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC