2020 NFHS Baseball Rules PDF

[scrounge]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

No. The words of the rules themselves are not their property. I had this confirmed by an intellectual property lawyer and looked up the case law. But all you have to do is a text comparison with OBR, and you'll see there's nowhere near enough original material to get copyright protection.

The photos, the ads, the commentary at the beginning and end of the book -- those are Fed's property. But the rules themselves? They'd get laughed out of court.

Sure you did. I'm not saying I don't believe you but....no, that's exactly what I'm saying.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by scrounge

Sure you did. I'm not saying I don't believe you but....no, that's exactly what I'm saying.

You want his name, or that of the firm he worked for? Chris Garvey.

Just now I Googled "uncopyrightable", and one of the first hits was game rules. See https://www.americanbar.org/groups/i...copyright_law/

Here's another discussion: Games and Other Uncopyrightable Systems – Madisonian: Essays on Governance and More

The principle is recognized worldwide. From https://2jk.org/english/?p=137 , "In a recent case, where an Indian company created a game similar to Scrabble, the Indian court ruled that while one can protect the trade-name of Scrabble, the rules of the game were uncopyrightable (Mattel, Inc. v. Agarwalla):"

In the realm of copyright law the doctrine of merger postulates that were the idea and expression are inextricably connected, it would not possible to distinguish between two. In other words, the expression should be such that it is the idea, and vice-versa, resulting in an inseparable “merger” of the two. Applying this doctrine courts have refused to protect (through copyright) the expression of an idea, which can be expressed only in a very limited manner, because doing so would confer monopoly on the idea itself.

Or look up Affiliated Hospital Prods., Inc. v. Merdel Game Mfg. Co. See https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/defaul...20Doctrine.pdf

Besides, Fed's baseball rules have practically zero original content, being cribbed from OBR. Consider also how the wording of Fed's rules is arrived at: by a committee, having gotten input from surveys all over the country, making tiny amendments year after year. If you could produce a copyrighted work by such a process, who could possibly be determined to own it? Tiny pieces here and there? I doubt the committee members or secretary even sign a work-for-hire agreement abjuring personal copyright.