Deckmaster and Hasbro question

Btw, WotC with regard to Magic: The Gathering has announced legal actions against counterfeit/proxy cards:

• Why We Care About Counterfeits

While MtG with a different much higher values for individual cards and different secondary market, I just wanted to remark that WotC is looking at these issues. The first sentence in the article reads:

Recently we at Wizards of the Coast have taken action against a number of individuals creating counterfeit Magic: The Gathering cards and claiming they are proxies.

jaz000 wrote:

I doubt much happens in 2014 - that sounds like speculation to me

What I do find interresting though is all the FFG games that use a variety of different words for using and rotating cards by 90 degrees - is that not an easy was around the tap/untap mechanism?

You know when playing AGOT LCG everytime you rotate a card and say "exhaust" somewhere a hasbro shareholder screams ...

They couldn't copyright the ability to simply rotate a card or card like item to the right. The name and function is what they have a CP on.

Call it something else even though it has the same function and you're fine.

It isn't a "way around" anything. If they want to be douche bags and attempt at locking down a VITAL mechanic in card games, kudos to each and every person which sticks it to them.

Nac wrote:

I have a question: which are the licenced aspects of the game belonging to Hasbro? Tap and untap only?

Tap, untap, the fact that the cardbacks say "Deckmaster", possibly the game mechanics in general, possibly the Discipline and Card Type symbols, possibly any art leftover from the WotC days...

Tap (and untap) keywords, Deckmaster symbol.
Discipline symbols, discipline names, cardtype symbols (maybe blood / pool symbols) are WW/CCP's.
The old rulebooks have that at the beginning, iirc.

I just found this topic and therefore read some parts of the patent linked in the first posts.

It appears to me that the trading part of the deckmaster patent (the fact that cards have a value due to scarcity) is an important one.

So what about print on demand? The way I see it, it is clearly outside of this?

I am no lawyer but I post here so maybe someone can explain a little bit how the things works?

Timo wrote:

It appears to me that the trading part of the deckmaster patent (the fact that cards have a value due to scarcity) is an important one.

So what about print on demand? The way I see it, it is clearly outside of this?

1) You can still trade cards that were printed on demand. Prices of cards in small numbers may still be prohibitive when you factor in minimum orders, postage, exchange rates etc.; card text may change and a collector may want all varieties (but The Powers That Be would rather not keep selling Up Yours with its old pre-errata card text); there could be promotional versions with alternative artwork (I would pay good money for an official copy of Ossian with Josh Feuerstein's artwork ) etc.

2) The patent also notes that while most probably will, not all trading cards necessarily have collectable status. "Many, if not all, of these trading cards have collectable status, i.e., have limited availability and have a financial as well as game-playing value."

3) Patent law is not the only source of intellectual property issues in V:TES. There are a variety of issues involving patents, trademarks, and copyright. (And possibly other forms - some jurisdictions recognise design rights as a separate thing, though in the US they appear to be mostly another form of patent.) Non-legal people often use "copyright" to refer to all of them indiscriminately, but they're potentially very different.