NFHS 2012 Rules Book

[BktBallRef]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

First of all, copyright applies only to original material. The rules makers of the various USAn codes started with a single rule book and by degrees amended them, sometimes differently, and sometimes borrowing language from each other. Over most of that time nobody thought of putting a copyright notice on; that was a recent development. (The USFL rule book was 99% verbatim NFL's, yet they each had a copyright notice. You'll notice neither tried to sue the other over infringement!) When a work has very little original content, and that which is original is interleaved in such a way that it can't be easily picked out from the old material, even the original content is not protectable. What Fed and the other rules makers do have is some original stuff printed in the same volume as the rules, at the beginning and the end of the book, sandwiching the rules themselves, and those are the only parts copyright could legitimatelhy apply to -- but who even wants those parts?

Second, copyright is for literary expression, not for useful items such as instructions. A proprietary game or equipment for it can be patented, either utility or design patents, but the instructions for it cannot effectively be protected by copyright.

Third, when it comes to rules writing, the nature of it is such that there are usually very few says to say a thing differently and have it mean the same thing yet be as concise. In such cases, copyright has been held not to apply, because we know you're allowed to copy ideas, but it would be silly in such a case to insist on altering their wording.

Go ahead, compare the language in contemporary Fed & NCAA football rules in many passages. How could they possibly stand together if copyright applied to them? Each one could say they were being infringed by the other, but we know the truth, which is that copyright does not apply to their actual rules. It may apply to some ancillary material in their rule books, but not the rules themselves.

An expert legal opinion.