Peter Armstrong wrote:Is "Thin Rake" itself, or are published Game of Life images generally, under copyright?
This is actually an interesting question in itself.
I Am Not A Lawyer, but my general understanding is that:
- on one hand, any original creative work can be copyrighted (and, under the Berne convention, automatically is, if it meets the threshold of originality), but
- on the other hand, mere ideas, facts and mathematical truths are not eligible for copyright.
So the question basically comes down to whether a cellular automaton pattern is a creative work, with a human author whose original creativity the pattern embodies, or a mere statement of a mathematical fact about the behavior of the automaton rule. And the answer almost certainly is "it depends."
In particular,
any two-color bitmap image can be a GoL pattern (possibly a Garden of Eden, but still), so technically, it's clear that
some GoL patterns must be eligible for copyright. There are even ways to encode arbitrary bitmaps into e.g. GoL still lifes or flotillas, demonstrating that such patterns (if sufficiently complex and arbitrary) may be copyrightable too.
On the other hand, clearly e.g. the existence of small spaceships like the glider (or the *WSS, or even the
loafer or the
copperhead) is a nontrivial emergent property of the B3/S23 rule (which itself is too simple to be copyrighted), and a pattern showing such a spaceship is merely the natural expression of this mathematical fact (and thus, per the
merger doctrine, cannot be copyrighted).
Finding such patterns might take a lot of creativity and hard work, but the patterns themselves are mathematical facts, and thus not copyrightable.
So what about large constructed spaceships (or other "functional" patterns, like rakes or puffers or guns, etc.) like the
caterpillar or, say, Hickerson and Callahan's
thin p960 rake? While the simplest of those might be borderline cases, I suspect that most of them would technically be copyrightable, on the same grounds on which computer software is considered copyrightable. Basically, while e.g. the fact that a 17c/45 spaceship exists (and can be constructed using certain parts and techniques) is not copyrightable, as long as such a ship could be constructed in many ways, the specific choice of how to put the parts together may be considered creative and original, and therefore eligible for copyright.
Of course, as dvgrn notes above, there's a longstanding tradition that published GoL patterns are considered to be freely usable by anyone, at least for the conventional purposes of experimentation, non-commercial distribution and adaptation. Given that such patterns are usually generated by hobbyists and academics, and that there's normally little if any commercial interest or opportunity involved, any motivation for anyone to actually pursue a copyright claim on a GoL pattern, even if they might technically have one, is extremely limited.
Whether that tradition would actually stand up in court as a defence against a copyright infringement claim, should someone decide to raise one, is something that cannot be definitely answered until and unless such an unlikely lawsuit actually comes up. And even then, it might well depend on the specific facts of the case, the jurisdiction it was brought up in, and ultimately the whims of the judge(s) involved. Personally (and still keeping in mind that I'm just a random layperson) I suspect that, on its own, such an appeal to tradition would carry little weight, although it might be enough to let the infringement be considered non-willful, if the accused infringer was acting in good faith under established custom. That said, the kind of uses one would typically make of a GoL pattern (i.e. academic or hobbyist research) could very likely be considered
fair use (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) anyway, and a tradition of such use being tolerated in the community might well be weighed as one factor when considering this.
Anyway, my advice to the OP would be that, if they're going to use a complex constructed GoL pattern as part of a creative work, and especially if they may wish to someday profit commercially from that work, the
safest course would be to ask for permission from the creators of the pattern in advance. While it's extremely unlikely that anyone would bother to sue anyone else over a GoL pattern, it's still better to be safe than sorry, especially if there might be money involved. Besides, it's the polite thing to do, anyway.