Wizards and demons: does a copyright claim spell trouble for card gamers?
A decision by the US Copyright Office to grant protection to an academic covering his " Magic: the Gathering" (MTG) trading cards has left players furious—and IP lawyers perplexed.
In August, Robert Hovden, a physics professor from the University of Michigan successfully obtained copyright protection for a deck he created, dubbed "Angels and Demons".
His actions caused confusion and anger in card game communities, with fears rising over whether using an online ‘decklist’—a list of the cards a player will use in a game—could foreshadow legal consequences.
MTG is a fantasy card game published by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999.
The game sees players attempt to take their opponents ‘life total’ down to zero by summoning creatures and casting spells to beef up their position or weaken their opponents.
The concept of the game draws on basic fantasy concepts such as vampires and werewolves and is extremely popular, with over 35 million players worldwide, according to Business Insider.
Angels and Demons, the archetype of cards comprising Hovden’s now copyright-protected deck, is fairly popular in MTG.
It uses three of the game’s colour types (red, white, and black) to continually attack opponents then flooding your own field with creatures using the effect of cards like Kaalia of the Vast and Avacyn, Angel of Hope.
Hovden is a known provocateur when it comes to causing IP controversy—often seeking to push the boundaries of what can be protected with his applications.
In 2014, he reproduced MC Escher etchings at nanoscale on silver discs then sold them to collectors, much to the irritation of the artist’s estate, which is notoriously combative when it comes to copyright litigation.
In his latest work, the Michigan professor suggested that he could prohibit his deck from being used in MTG tournaments. When asked why he made the filing, he simply stated his actions were about "owning culture and people’s participation in culture through copyright", reports Pluralistic.
There is a potential financial advantage of monetising decklists and the rise in prominence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has legitimised the concept of cashing in on digital assets.
However, regardless of why the academic opted to seek this application, his decision has rocked a passionate community.
It’s a kind of magic
MTG’s publisher is no stranger when it comes to IP disputes with one of the most famous involving rival game Yu-Gi-Oh!
In its early days, ‘Spell’ cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! were called "Magic" cards, much to the dismay of Wizards of the Coast, which sought to have it changed.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game was released in North America in March 2002 but MTG was released almost a decade earlier, in 1993.
To avoid a potential legal battle, Yu-Gi-Oh! publisher Konami agreed to change ‘Magic’ cards to ‘Spell’ cards as well as the name of the 2002 Magic Ruler booster packs for the same reason.
Netdecking and the trouble with tournaments
Players of either card game tend to post their decklists online, dubbed "netdecking", with sites like YGOProDECK, EDHREC, and Deckstats.net allowing players to build decks that other players have posted, or compare their own builds to either add or remove cards.
Decklists are often also posted to YouTube, with channels such as Cimoooooooo, Tolarian Community College, and The Commander's Quarters posting deck-building content, while earning thousands of views at the same time.
Looking up decklists is an integral part of playing card games. The free exchange of information keeps average hobbyists informed about what some of the top-tier players are using.
Hoven’s decision, while novel, has caused outrage in the card game community.
Journalist Cory Doctorow first broke the story and said that players could “become substantially limited in how they can play the game themselves” should people begin to copyright certain decks they create.
“The implication is that this could spark a stampede to register copyright in MTG decks—which are painstakingly assembled for home games and tournament play, sometimes with big-dollar cash payouts—and take the best decks out of the game,” he wrote.
“This is indeed a gnarly question about the ethics, mechanics, and practicalities of US copyright law.”
Players fear that the decision by the US Copyright Office could ruin netdecking sites by potentially deterring card game players from sharing their builds online.
In terms of competitive events, decks in games like MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh! tend to be nearly identical.
Figure 1 shows is a breakdown of the decks used at the 2019 iteration of YCS London—one of the largest Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments in the calendar year and one of the last in-person events before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
