Hi Periot,
We at Project Aon can't give you legal advice. That said, I can make the
following *observations*, which may be helpful.
- Copyright is the legal protection of a creative work. Exactly what it
covers will vary from place to place, but in general, copyright does not
protect ideas, concepts, appearances, and the like; it only protects a
specific work that *demonstrates* the ideas, concepts, etc.
- However, there are other types of legal protection that may apply:
- Trade marks protect design elements that set a business's products
apart from the competition. Making a book that uses the same designs,
names, etc. as an existing book may violate someone's trade mark.
- Patents protect inventions (or more generally, "ideas"). I've never
heard of anyone having a patent on gamebooks, but again, I can't give you
legal advice here.
- There are many different gamebooks/"choose your own
adventure"-style books, from many different publishers. (Lone Wolf,
Fighting Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure, Way of the Tiger...). This
suggests that none of them have the proprietary rights that would prevent
others from making gamebooks altogether (but again, each of them has their
own "style", which may be necessary to avoid each others' trade marks).
Ultimately, if this is something you want to pursue commercially, you
should see a lawyer to get legal advice. However, if it's just a hobby,
many other people (including several Project Aon volunteers!) have pursued
the same hobby without any issues. As long as you don't copy anyone else's
style too closely (and certainly don't directly copy any of their text,
including rules explanations), I don't think that you'll have a problem.
Lastly, if you do go ahead and make a gamebook, our community would love to
hear about it! You might consider joining the Project Aon forum
<http://projectaon.proboards.com/> and posting about your work in the
General Discussion section.
Wishing you well with your project,
--
Tim Pederick
On behalf of Project Aon