10 Mar '15 18:18>
Who owns the copyright on a chess game?
Originally posted by Duncan ClarkeNot a trivial question; no simple answer.
Who owns the copyright on a chess game?
Originally posted by MontyMooseThis leads to an entertaining little paradox. There's descriptions in one or two Soviet chess player's books (I think Tal had this happen) of being in tournaments where they were the only player. So the officials, because this was the Soviet Union, would insist on the player making up some games so they'd save face and not all be sent of to Siberia or some such worry. The paradox is that if it's a faked game it is a composition and by the above arguments copyrightable, however, if it's a real game then it's not copyrightable.
Fascinating question! Just doing a copy/paste of your question into Google yields 12,500,000 results.
From a quick read it seems the general answer is no one can own a copyright on a chess game.
A couple of answers from the Chess.com website:
1)
DrSpudnik
Quick answer: no. Your games are not considered by the courts to be your property. Game ...[text shortened]... on the analysis, but not on the game/positions.
I wouldn't mind owning 1.e4 and 1.d4 though..