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.''
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Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
