mrloupcity:

That was not the purpose of the intellectual property rights that most game manufactures apply for. Sure, we see Battleship as a great game that has had millions of sales, but what was the demand for this game before it was introduced?

The idea behind patents and copyrights is to protect the product through its initial stages of growth. Once it has become 'branded' because it is so popular, then the law is relaxed a bit.

The beauty of this approach is easy to appreciate. If I a product is successful, then it "gets so big" that once the patent expires, the main company will not be hurt by imitations and copies.

If the company was not successful, very few, if any, will follow in their footsteps.

Intellectual property rights are similar to "staking your claim" when you found gold in 1849. You register the area of land you are mining, pay some nomial fee per square foot, you demonstrate the chunk of land is not so big that you can't handle it, then you can mine at your leisure and not have to worry about someone removing ore from your site.