Posts Tagged: "The Game of Life"

On June 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a decision in Markham Concepts, Inc. v. Hasbro, Inc. affirming a lower court’s ruling that the game design firm that developed classic board game, “The Game of Life,” possessed no termination rights in Hasbro’s copyright to that game. In so ruling, the First Circuit reiterated that the “instance and expense” test to analyze work for hire status applies to works governed by the Copyright Act of 1909, and found that the district court properly applied that test in determining that Markham’s successors-in-interest had no termination rights.