Are chess games copyrighted? First and foremost, I've already done some research regarding my question - web pages including, but not limited to the following ones, weren't able to answer my question to it's full extent: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/17143/what-are-the-laws-concerning-copyright-of-chess-games https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1wgnc7/chess_and_copyright/ https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/copyright-on-games etc. According to various sources, chess games (the moves themselves) aren't protected by copyright of any kind. The consens in those articles is that the infringement starts with either advertising a blog, book, etc. (doesn't matter whether it's paid/free) with a player, i.e. &quot;100 best games of Magnus Carlsen&quot;. Another opinion which has been shared frequently is that chess notations are eligible for copyright. That out of the way, let's dive right into the question itself: Suppose someone wants to share a paid blog post including special games of different kinds of players. For each of those games he lists a snippet of the important moves (which is completely legal) and includes the name of both parties, i.e. the white player is &quot;Magnus Carlsen&quot;, black player is &quot;Anish Giri&quot;. Moreover, the event has been played in 2015 at the World Championship (details are fictional). Is such a publication copyrighted? The games are taken by any database, e.g. https://www.chess.com/, https://database.chessbase.com/, https://www.chessgames.com/, etc. If it is, why do these sites have millions of games (they surely haven't requested permission by each player)? To be more precise, what parts of the chess game are copyrighted? Am I allowed to share a selection of different games, including details like names, date, place and so forth - all public knowledge?
This answer reflects US law; I don't know German law. To be more precise, what parts of the chess game are copyrighted? The parts which are not copyrighted are the facts of the individual games. These include the moves, the players involved, the venue, the clock times, draw offers, etc. Basically, anything found on the scoresheet. The parts which are copyrighted are the parts the author actually, well, authored. Commentary and analysis, for example. A discussion of the &quot;important&quot; moves of the game would certainly qualify. Am I allowed to share a selection of different games, including details like names, date, place and so forth - all public knowledge? Single games, yes. But you can't take Fischer's &quot;My 60 Memorable Games&quot; and publish a collection of just those 60 games, even if you leave out his commentary - the creativity that went into selecting which games were included qualifies for copyright as well. (Note that a simple collection of all of a player's games in the order in which they were played would not qualify for copyright, as that's not creative enough.)
Do you have an explicit permission by the artist? Does the artist give a blanket permission to anyone which covers this kind of use of their work (a license)? If no, then you commit a copyright violation when you use their work for your blog. This applies to practically any country which signed the Berne convention which is almost everywhere in the world. Having no commercial interest is usually not an excuse to violate copyright. Regarding which jurisdiction applies when you, your website and the copyright holder are in different countries: I opened a new question about this.
Can he use another commercial product that is copyrighted, e.g. a map of a location (the map is a political map and has nothing to do with trees), for his tree research purposes, if such a map won't be part of the book he works on? Yes. Copyright protects particular expressions of ideas and knowledge, not the ideas and knowledge themselves. Using a map for research purposes when the map or a modified version of it does not appear in the final work does not make the final work a &quot;derivative work&quot; covered by copyright.
Generally, no, this will not violate copyright. Your end user might violate copyright, but that is their problem not yours. Your program is a tool, just like a word processor is. If I copy a Harry Potter book into a word processor that does not make the word processor maker liable. There is a concept of "contributory infringement", which I think is what you are concerned about. I don't know about Danish law in particular, but most countries would require evidence that you had reasonable knowledge that actual copyright violation was occuring, rather than just being aware that it might happen in theory. This is normally applied to file sharing services who have to have "notice and takedown" measures, file filters and the like. This isn't your concern as you never have any access to the files created by your users. You can also be found liable if you induce anyone to commit copyright violations. Don't draw your customers attention to the custom monster feature as a workaround for those copyrighted monsters, as that could be considered to be inducement. Also don't provide any "wizards" or similar tools which make it noticeably easier to duplicate the custom monsters (e.g. if you notice that the copyrighted custom dragon stats are all on a linear scale with dragon size, don't create a "dragon creation wizard" embodying that fact.) This assumes that your program runs entirely on the end user computer. Its different if you provide any kind of cloud storage for generated characters.
Assuming Chegg own the copyright, then they can restrict the activities that copyright protects The statement you quote is no more or less than the rights granted to them by copyright law. Basically, it's their stuff, they get to decide how you can use it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the uses that you have nominated are prohibited. For that, we would have to look at the specific fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright protection where you are. It's likely that both of your usage scenarios would meet fair use and probably fair dealing (which is harder to meet). You may also find that, buried somewhere in those massive terms of use, is something that deals with this directly.
Since the person who posted the game component under the CC-BY license has no right to do so, no one who used it in reliance on that license had any rights either, and all such uses were at least technically infringement (unless they came under a copyright exception, which seems unlikely). The holder of the copyright on the component could sue in any country where a game using it was published. The details of the law, including the rules on damages and other remidies, will vary from country to country. In the united-states those rules are contained in Chapter 5 of title 17 USC particularly sections 502-505. Section 504 provides for possible money damages. Section 502 provides for a possible injunction (court order to stop infringing). Section 503 provides for for infringing works to be seized. Section 505 provides for possible awards of costs and legal fees to a successful plaintiff (copyright holder). Section 502 allows injunctions to &quot;prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright&quot; on &quot;reasonable&quot; terms. But when the infringement has already been stopped, no such injunction is needed and a court is not likely to impose one. Section 503 allows the court to order the impoundment of infringing copies and &quot;plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles by means of which such copies or phonorecords may be reproduced&quot;. This is largely obsolete for digital content. Section 504 is the key. It offers the plaintiff a choice between actual damages plus profits and statutory damages. The rule for the first is: The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. This means money made by use of the unauthorized content, plus any loss of sales or other losses suffered by the owner. Money mad by the infringing work but not made by use of the infringing content is not included, if this can be proven. Income obtained after the infringing content was removed would probably not be included in the infringer's profits. Statutory damages can be any amount between $750 and $30,000 that the count thinks is just, but id the infringement is proved to be &quot;innocent&quot; the lower limit is $200. The exact provision reads: In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. An award of costs and fees under section 505 is entirely up to the discretion of the court. If the maximum possible award of infringer's profits is $10,000, and a defense of innocent infringement is plausible, a plaintiff might well find such a suit unprofitable, given the legal expenses involved in preparing an carrying through such a suit. But that is entirely up to the copyright owner. An owner may choose to file even an unprofitable suit in an effort to deter others. A person who has discovered that s/he has innocently infringed a copyright and made some money in the process would be wise to document the prompt removal of the infringing content form any publication, and efforts to notify the copyright owner. Ther is no way to be sure what actions the owner will take, if any, within those that the law allows. Often a owner in such a case will not bring suit if the infringement was apparently innocent, resulting profits were small, the infringement has been halted, and future infringement by that infringer seems unlikely. But different owners have different policies on such matters. An owner can delay in deciding whether to file suit or not.
A person who uses a name similar to an existing protected trademark may have committed trademark infringement. The trademark owner can sue, and possibly collect significant damages, and possibly also get an injunction against further infringement. Note that this is not a matter of a crime, but of a lawsuit by one person or business against another. (A point of terminology: A trademark, like a copyright, is said to be &quot;infringed&quot; when someone uses it without permission in ways that the law does not allow. The word &quot;broken&quot; is not used for this.) In many countries, only marks properly registered with the appropriate national registry are protected. In the US simply using the mark can lead to its being protected, although registration can give greater rights to the mark owner. Protection in one country does not give protection in another. In general, protection only applies in the same or a similar market area as that in which the mark is already being used. An electronic game may well be similar enough to a card or board game for protection to apply. A key question is how similar a mark can be and avoid infringement. The basic test is if a reasonable person could be confused into thinking that the products were from the same maker, or were affiliated, or that the maker of the original product or service endorsed the new one. This is always something of a judgement call. If a mark is similar enough that a judge or jury might think that some reasonable consumers would be confused or mislead, then there is risk of an adverse judgement. Note that even an unfounded suit may be costly to defend. If there is any question, consulting an experienced trademark lawyer may well be a good idea. I will not express an opinion of the similarity of &quot;2oobbllee&quot; and &quot;Dobble&quot;. That would be legal advice. But if the OP were to change the name of the app, the whole matter would seem to be finished with no risk of court action. Note that the concept of a game, unlike the name, cannot be protected, neither by trademark law nor by copyright law,
AD&amp;D, like all games, is covered under copyright. HOWEVER, games are not treated the same as books and other works. Rules of a game, including "stats" and other information required to play the game, are NOT protected by copyright. This is Copyright Law, and has nothing to do with a license which a work is published under. Artwork is fully protected by copyright, as is any setting descriptions. In the context of the D&amp;D franchise, the actual wording of any rulebooks, monster descriptions, game modules, and such are all protected by copyright, so you can't wholesale cut-and-paste things. But, that does not extend to the various mechanics of the game. Armor Class, Hit Dice, etc. are all mechanics, and CANNOT be protected. That includes values assigned to monsters or characters or such. A company cannot also protect the particular layout of those statistics, if that layout is considered generic in nature. In the case we are talking about, a table listing the statistics is NOT protected, as it does nothing more than list those statistics, and contains no original, protected material of WotC. In addition, uniquely created monsters, characters, etc. all have their name protected, but not their statistics. But generic names thereof cannot be protected. It is perfectly permissible to have a clone copy of a Drow and call them a Dark Elf (a generic name). One could not copy the description of the Drow from a Monster Manual, but the idea of a Dark Elf cannot be protected, nor can the statistics thereof. It is explicitly permissible by Copyright Law to clone the rules to a game, which in the context of D&amp;D includes a generic name for anything trademarked (thus, no Drow, and no Dungeon Master, but Dark Elf and Game Master), the mechanisms used to play the game -- including the terms used to reference them -- and all related numerical statistics associated with those components of the game. All of this is in addition to any rights the OGL gives you. These rights CANNOT be restricted by the OGL, as they are basic Copyright Law rights, not license rights. I've been writing D&amp;D expansions and such for over 4 decades now (since the late 1980s), and this is what I've repeatedly been told by various Copyright lawyers. In short, provided you don't use the text description of a particular monster (and instead write your own one, using the same concept of what the monster is), and you don't use a trademarked name for it, it is possible to "scrape copy" the statistic summary section of any Monster Manual or the like. Here's an explicit parallel: the game of Monopoly. When creating a clone of Monopoly, here's what you CAN do: Copy the basic layout of the board - a square with the properties laid out in a path around the edge. Arrange the properties as they currently are, WITH THE CURRENT NAMES on them. Each property's name is not possible to protect, as they are generic names. Free Parking, Jail, and Go To Jail, and Go can all be labeled and placed accordingly. Chance and Community Chest cards can be named as such, and referred to as such. The text on the cards is also (mostly) usable. The costs and values of all Chance, Community Chest, and properties can be copied. The rules of movement, going to jail, etc. can all be copied. Have pieces that are Hats, Dogs, Cars, etc, and both Hotels and Houses, and explicitly refer to them by those names. Here's what you CANNOT do: Use the particular color scheme of the board Use any artwork, including the drawings on any cards. Use the particular graphic presentation of a card. Copy the design of any piece, except the House/Hotel which, insofar as they are very generic, can be extremely similar. You can only use the word "Monopoly" in the context of referring to the Parker Brothers game, not in any other context, as it is trademarked. The specific wording of the rulebook cannot be duplicated. You have to write the rules in your own words. The wording of certain Community Chest and Chance cards, where they are not just generic game instructions, cannot be duplicated. E.g. "Grand Opera Night—Collect $50 from every player for opening night seats" cannot be duplicated, but you can have any other wording for something that would gain you $50 per player. Now, see how that works in comparison to D&amp;D?