> Are Wordle's mechanics even copyrighted?
My understanding of intellectual property is that not only are the game mechanics not copyrighted, they aren’t even copyrightable. The code and assets that are used to implement the game mechanics are automatically protected by copyright but not the gameplay itself.
Bringing copyright into this discussion is an irrelevant distraction.
Edit: as both Apple and the NY Times are based in the US, I thought I’d double-check what the US legal situation is (in case American rules differ from the Berne convention). It turns out there’s a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to this subject¹:
> There is a long established Copyright principle called the idea–expression distinction, where Copyright is meant to protect a creator’s unique expression, without giving anyone a monopoly on a broader idea. The US Copyright Office specifically states that “Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game.”
Also: A Stack Exchange answer² provided a reference for the quotation cited in the Wikipedia article. The original US Copyright Office URL is now a 404 but here’s the archived version of their article: https://web.archive.org/web/20160403041628/http://www.copyri...
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
² https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4653
