Asri-unix.187 net.chess utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure Wed Dec 9 01:51:09 1981 computer chess and the law BC-LAW By James Warren and Brian J. Kelly (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service) Legal chess: Federal appeals judges don't necessarily have minds like computers nor the analytical powers of chess champions. However, a decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals forced consideration of a growing consumer pasttime, computer chess, while inspecting a favorite corporate pasttime-stealing another person's idea. Judges Luther M. Swygert, Walter Cummings and Philip Nichols Jr. have, in large part, affirmed District Judge Joel Flaum, who cleared JS&A Group Inc., of Northbrook, Ill., of allegations that it ripped off a Florida firm, Data Cash Systems, for the computer program used in JS&A's computer chess game. In 1976, the Florida folks contracted creation of a computer program for a computer chess game. The result allowed playing the Computer at six different levels of expertise and, the court admits, ''involved considerable human time, effort and ingenuity. Like a patient high school science teacher, the judges take care to explain how the whole thing works. Like most computer programs, this evolved through a ''flow chart,'' or schematic representation of the program logic and then a ''source code,'' or programming language translated into assembly language. All that information could be stored into a mechanical medium like a magnetic tape or disk. In this instance the medium was a ''read only memory'' chip, or a ROM, a nifty silicon chip chemically imprinted with tiny switches. It was the technological soul of the Florida firm's CompuChess, (cq) marketing of which started in 1977. The firm's ROMs were made by General Instruments Corp., which, in 1978, revealed it was manufacturing an identical ROM for the chess game made by JS&A. The Florida firm tried to prevent the marketing of Computer Chess and then filed suit for copyright infringement. In a key part of his ruling, Flaum held the ROM could not be copyright. As JS&A attorney George Gerstman admits, ''The computer industry was very shook up. It felt this meant everybody could steal everybody's ROMs.'' The appellate court rules on different grounds and notes that ''neither side on appeal defends the district court's position'' regarding the ROM'S ability to be copyrighted. Instead, it affirms Flaum on grounds of insufficent notice of copyright. It holds the Florida firm didn't include a copyright notice on its ROM, game board, packaging orgame instructions. The program for the chess game, it rules, went into the public domain under rules of the Copyright Act of 1909 (for various reasons, the court feels the 1909 act, where absence of a copyright was deemed a forfeiture, is to be used rather than the Copyright Act of 1976, which would allow a correction within five years.). The Florida firm was represented by Michael Shakman and Geraldine Brown. ''The decision is not the square statement that computers companies would have liked to have,'' says Brown. ''The Flaum decision remains the only one that discusses this whole issue. Judges may want to review it but it's not binding.'' The appellate court, as Brown underlines, won't nominate the Northbrook firm for Boy Scout honor prizes. ''We cannot award the defendants any accolades for their ethics, but this is not the statutory standard.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.