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Horus. Game with Royal Falcons where all pieces start off board and most captures return pieces to owner's hand. (7x7, Cells: 44) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

George Duke wrote on Fri, Apr 16, 2004 02:31 AM UTC:Poor ★

US Patent 5690334 for Falcon Chess is about seven years past the challenge
stage, so patent's claims are solid having been unchallenged. Games
patents go back over 100 years, including Scrabble, Monopoly; Peter
Aronson mentions under Complete Permutation, Ed Trice's Gothic Chess
Patent 6481716. Lost on Aronson is that 'Horus', while perfectly obvious, is
already used extensively in Falcon Chess poetry for the same patented
novelty. Having searched for just the right wording for Falcon-Horus
images, I think of it as expropriation for this miniature chess: no
commercial consequence would be issue, just common courtesy for those who
may not be singlemindedly obsessed with churning out new sets of game
rules.  Patenting is wholly different sphere than mere names of games:
about five US Patents for Chess issue per year, down from a peak of ten a
decade ago. As stated in Complete Permutation Chess comment, because
well-schooled in variants myself, I deliberately excluded 8x8 from my
claims, so CVist may experiment and welcome to use Falcon there without
infringement. [One could] relate these ideas to Fergus Duniho's Enneagram
under Game Design.