Chess and Intellectual Property

In 1951 there was a chess game.

My grandfather who wrote as a journalist for a paper, wrote about this game, showing the first 10 moves of the game and discussing it.  Did he break some kind of copyright law for doing so?

What your gf wrote--an annotated game score--could be copyrighted, but so far bare game scores are up for grabs.

By 1940, we had copyright laws in place and had begun policing them, thanks to Walt Disney, in particular.
 
The great age of piracy for America was the late 19th century.

A great discussion of all this is in Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture.

The subject is a murky one. You note that in 1894, the phonograph was in its infancy and issues of digital reproduction were in the future.

today we find that statement by Charles Tomlinson absurd.

 In a worst case scenario, we could even see chess journalists and
publishers sued for articles and books already published but it is
more likely that FIDE would attempt to enforce their view on a
"from now on" basis. If FIDE succeeded in controlling the game
scores in events under its own jurisdiction, the world
correspondence chess governing body ICCF might be tempted to
try and follow suit, and the same could go for other bodies that
organise chess events, such as national associations and even clubs
and commercial tournament organisers.
 
interesting. i can see arguments on both sides, which makes it an interesting issue, the type perfect for a law school classroom.

Bump

Last time I heard, chess games could not be copyrighted.  And even if they could, showing only the first 10 moves would probably be considered fair use.  Normally the first 10 moves is just opening theory anyway.

Wasn't this game, in fact, played in 1950  and reported by Powers in his May 21, 1950 chess column for the Milwaukee Journal? And that part of the controversy was that the game was presented as a 10 move game, when, in fact, it wasn't?

Batgirl that is the alleged story, but we have the original column and it's not there.  And it wasn't presented as a 10 move game but likely my grandfather was discussing the 10 moves specifically. 

Interesting. Thanks.

What saddens me is that Kujoth, rather than asking my grandfather about it, just jumped to conclusions, there seems to be bad blood there.  I've tried to set the record straight as I knew my grandfather was an honorable man, and would not intentionally try to hurt someone.  In writing a column thought that is fairly small, one might not be able to write about an entire game, but an aspect of a game he found compelling.