The laws involved in protecting board games are complicated. Various websites, forums, and Reddit threads attempt to answer questions from game designers on what they are allowed to do when designing their games as well as how to protect certain aspects of their games.

One common question from game designers is how can they prevent third parties from stealing their games? This is a legitimate and viable question because a game designer typically introduces their game designs into a public forum to solicit feedback, which may be implemented into the end-product. The first instinct when designing a game is to share your design with as many people as possible. Have the community of players and designers tear apart your game so that you gather valuable input to implement and make the end-product as polished as possible. With this kind of development process, the question arises: “What prevents someone from just stealing my game?”

This is where having a basic understanding of Intellectual Property (IP) law is helpful.

To date, there does not appear to be a simplified online guide, authored by an attorney, which explains intellectual property law as it relates to board games. Nevertheless, to be clear, this article is not providing legal advice. The goal of this article is to…

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