I wonder how the management here deals with the intellectual property issues associated with games that
are not clearly in the public domain. In particular games with a living inventor, or recent commercially produced
versions. At least 3 of the current games fall into that twilight zone: Lines of Action, Othello, and Amazons.

I'm guessing - strictly a guess - that the policy is to hope no one complains and move on.

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@ddyer
If i remember well, Playstrategy has permission from World Othello Federation and i think it's the same for other games but i'm really not sure

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An intellectual property issue arises when the author of a game specifies that the game is commercial. Show me at least one game author who will not be happy with the implementation of his game on some site. I will tell you more that all the games that the authors patent await oblivion. There are plenty of examples.
If you created a game, then you created it to be played, not so that everyone asks you for permission to play it.

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@ddyer

Thank you for bringing up a valid concern regarding intellectual property matters. I am one of the main developers on PlayStrategy, and not the owner, and so I don't know the answer to all of your points, but I can try and find out.

In the case of Othello, I can clarify that PlayStrategy have a formal arrangement with World Othello Federation and Megahouse for the use of the Othello name. You can see this at the bottom of the rules page here: <playstrategy.org/variant/flipello>

I am not aware of any similar agreements for Lines of Action or Amazons.

The situation with Othello is interesting - I doubt that the World Othello Federation owns the trademark for Othello
or has a formal agreement with the owner. It's nice to have found someone to say "yes" though.

On Boardspace I operate informally most of the time - an email exchange with the apparent IP owner is all there is. It
works out well most of the time, although in a few cases the IP owners have changed their minds after the fact, and I've
taken games down to maintain friendly relations.

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Possibly also relevant, this post from a discord forum:
Dartko — Today at 11:34 AM
the Amazons Wikipedia page claims that it is trademarked so I went on the Argentinian trademark database to check
it expired in 2005
Attachment file type: acrobat
EL_JUEGO_DE_LAS_AMAZONAS_MARCA.pdf
266.92 KB
so I guess we dont have to worry about another Othello situation

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