Does anyone know anything about IP rights (or lack thereof) in the jigsaw puzzle industry?
My son has recently become enamored with 3D puzzles and is currently working on a world globe like this one. So I was wondering if the jigsaw puzzle companies typically assert any IP rights in these creations. Obviously images on puzzles (2D or 3D) may be copyrighted if they are original and I’m sure some puzzle companies pay to license the images from others. But what about the puzzle itself? Is it a derivative work of the original image? Are aspects of puzzles patentable? I know at least one puzzle company advertises that it uses special new materials for the pieces that make them interlock more effectively. And 3D puzzles utilize particular methods for putting them together: for example, in the puzzles my son has been playing with, you can construct the puzzle either by image or by number (the backs of the pieces have consecutive numbers and arrows on them so you can use those as a guide for putting it together). Is that a patentable method of some kind? Presumably, in countries whose patent systems specifically exclude rules for playing games from patentability on subject-matter grounds (eg in the UK), these kinds of methods would not be patentable.
Anyone have any thoughts about copyrightability or patentability of puzzles?