Talk:Internet Diplomacy

Intellectual Property
Does anyone have any more information about the IP rights with Diplomacy? Did Calhamer retain the rights and just license the right to publish to Hasbro and others? Or were the rights transferred to Hasbro? I am asking because I am wondering who has the right to enforce the copyright, Calhamer or Hasbro? Because if it were not up to Hasbro to enforce the copyright, I could see why Calhamer would not bother taking action. Perhaps the IP rights should be mentioned in the main article about the board game? 137.203.128.49 (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

You would need to talk to a lawyer, and even then it would only be an opinion.

I'm not a lawyer but (based on the Scrabulous case):

- I doubt they have patents on the game mechanisms. I'm confident none of these sites actually implement the rules as given in any published rule-book, but follow the much more precise (non-official) Diplomacy Adjudicator Test Cases.

- They would have copyrights on the works in the board game as they publish it; the published rulebook, board, box art, etc. If an unofficial implementation used these they would infringe, but an unofficial computer implementation wouldn't have any reason to use these. You could try and use "derivative work" to refer to the map / board, but it's a historic map of Europe with simplified borders.

- They have the trademark on Diplomacy of course, this would likely be the main issue for the sites with "Diplomacy" in the name. You could argue that they've abandoned it but that probably wouldn't fly.

So (again, not a lawyer) I would say Hasbro could compel these hobbyist sites to change names and perhaps sue for damages. They have done so in the past against Scrabulous which infringed the Scrabble trademark, but that was a lucrative business that was making significant revenue far surpassing the board game itself. The sites here are all pretty low-scale, most are just hobbyist and don't make money, and Diplomacy has been around on the internet since it started without any complaint.

Interesting to think about but I wouldn't worry. 106.69.12.115 (talk) 04:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

One inaccurate detail
Hi - I have no idea how wikipedia works, but I wanted to mention that I can play a Live Game on playdiplomacy.com without a premium membership.

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6080:4200:16B9:A409:58A9:1009:7D7 (talk) 00:26, 21 December 2020 (UTC)