According to source, part-time inventor James Pickett has spent 17 years trying to sue somebody – anybody – in order to claim his reward for having invented using little football helmets in place of Checker pieces.

What’s odd about this is that Pickett actually owns three patents, one from 2002 involving a new method of playing four player Checkers (using helmets, of course), and you would think that he had learned enough about IP to know that there is no copyright protection for an idea (I am not a lawyer, of course, but 17 years of fruitless pursuit of this should be a clue). He discounts the possibility that Big League Promotions, the company that first started selling football helmet checkers in 1993, could have thought of the idea without somehow having stolen it from his presentation to the now defunct Marino Games at the 1987 Toy Fair. BLP told me to call back on Monday to speak to their PR contact.

And the only copyright I could find for the term “football checkers” is currently owned by a John E. Curry. (source)

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