Milton’ Bradley’s Connect Four game is a frequently knocked-off two-player four-in-a-row game which is played on a vertical board, gravity acting to force pieces put in a slot in the top frame to fall to the bottom of the column. As pieces stack up from the bottom, a win is achieved by getting four of your color pieces in a row, horizontally, vertically OR diagonally. The game has become a classic and is as interesting to play as it is simple.
Force Four and Connect Four
by David Parlett
1. Eurogift produces a game called Force Four which Hasbro claims infringes their trading rights over a similar game called Connect Four, and has asked me to judge whether or not they can defend Force Four on the grounds that the essence of the game it embodies lies in the public domain.
2. The game consists of a vertical board containing seven rows of six columns. Each player in turn drops a disc of his own colour into a column where it falls as far as it can before encountering the bottom of the board or a disc already in place. The winner is the first player to get four discs of his own colour in an uninterrupted line of four whether vertically, horizontally or diagonally.
3. The game over which Hasbro holds the rights is of unknown authorship but was first published by Milton Bradley in 1974. To demonstrate that its concept lies in the public domain it would be necessary to find other examples of a substantially similar game published at an earlier date, either as a marketable product of specific design and appearance, or as the rules of such a game in a printed publication.
4. I can reliably but regrettably affirm that no such game is to be found. (See appendix.) I do so on the basis of many years’ research into the history of board games and after consulting with other members of the International Society of Board Game Studies (http://www.boardgamestudies.info/).
5. It will not suffice to show that games of alignment are in the public domain on the grounds that they have been recorded in nearly all parts of the world since pre-Christian antiquity. All such traditional games are either three-in-a-row (Merels, Nought-and-Crosses etc) or five-in-a-row (Gomok-narabe, Renju, Go-bang etc), and all are played on essentially horizontal surfaces so that the effect of gravity plays no part in the strategy of play. Connect Four is distinguished primarily by being the first recorded game in which the object is to make a line of four and, more significantly, in which the horizontal board has been turned on edge to make it vertical, with a consequent effect on strategy.
6. Nor will it suffice to show that similar games have been produced with relative impunity. The most notable example is a game called The Captain’s Mistress, published by Nauticalia and distributed through Masters Traditional Games. The publicity for this game claims an origin in a supposed legend about its having been played by Captain Cook, the 18th-century explorer and navigator, but if such a legend exists (I have been unable to confirm it) there is no evidence to show that it refers to a game that is either vertical or four-in-a-row.
7. One reason why Hasbro has not challenged the publication of The Captain’s Mistress (or not done so successfully) is partly because, while it is possible to copyright a design or a specifically-worded set of rules, or protect a trademark, it is not possible to patent or similarly protect a game idea or concept (“ludeme”). To this extent, Force Four is on safe ground. However, a firmer reason is that The Captain’s Mistress is sufficiently different from Connect Four not to impinge on Hasbro’s registered design and trademark. It is made of wood, not plastic; its pieces are spheres, not discs; its colours are natural, not imposed; and its title bears no relation to its content, even to the extent of not including the word “four”. By contrast, Hasbro can, in my opinion, legitimately claim that the title and appearance of Force Four is so similar to that of Hasbro’s registered design as to present a threat to its sales, even if Force Four is not marketed through regular retail outlets.
Appendix
No vertical board game and no game of four-in-a-row alignment appears in such authoritative works as –
Bell, R C, Board and Table Games from Many Civilisations (1960, 1979)
Culin, S, Games of the Orient (1895), Games of the North American Indians (1907)
Falkener, E, Games Ancient and Oriental (1892)
Fiske, W F, Chess in Iceland (1905) (an extensive history of board games, despite its title)
Hyde, T, De Ludis Orientalibus Libri Duo (1689, 1694)
Lhôte, J-M, Histoire des Jeux de Société (1994)
Mackenzie, C, and Finkel, I (ed), Asian Games: The Art of Contest (2004)
Moulidars, La Grande Encyclopédie des Jeux (1840)
Murray, H J R, A History of Board Games Other than Chess (Oxford, 1952)
Parlett, D, The Oxford History of Board Games (1999)
Cram, etc (eds), Francis Willughby’s Book of Plaies (= Games) (c.1670, published 2003)
Nor is anything substantially similar recorded in any issue of the Study Papers of the International Board Games Association, or of Homo Ludens (Munich/Salzburg,1991-1999).
David Parlett, London, 8.1.2008
