You did it again. You said "We". In the whole time that I've been at this board (Since July 9th), not once did GothicInventor/ Quequesno/ EdTrice mention a partner in the ownership or patenting of Gothic Chess. He always said "Mine" and "I", never "we" or "ours". Not only that, you haven't posted to this board since April. Suddenly you're here saying how optimistic you are. Perhaps you're reading pessimism into my posts? I'm skeptical by nature. Don't mistake skepticism for pessimism. The way you've gone about your post of late is definitely sending warning flags up for me. I don't want to get caught off guard like I just did a couple of weeks ago, and it appears is still ongoing. You haven't answered one of those questions I posed, well one you did. But now you're here telling me how to moderate this board and who to ban. You're right, I don't like the fact that you, er excuse me, Ed Trice has patented this game. But that's just tough for me. It's still a good game. I truly believe that it can't be owned as I understand these things, the actual game itself, and its history. You can start by filling in the details and answering my concerns about ownership of this particular game and how you're going to protect your, er Ed's patent. Who are you? Why didn't Ed give you any credit? Let me start with my first questions.
1) What is your vested interest? Are you partners with Ed Trice? How come he never mentioned you?

You detect sarcasm in my tone? You very first post is ridiculous. You don't see it? The first line of the post dated 20. August 2004, 20:36:40
Media Coverage? I asked you about it, but no reply. Why would Hasbro need your permission, er Ed Trice's permission, to make Gothic Chess sets? The pieces predate his patent.

Next paragraph-Live news crews! I asked you about that too. No reply. Saying it like this makes one think of Eyewitness News, camera crews, and lots of microphones. What do you mean?

Then this sentence- Some offers have come in regarding online playing sites, which I am a little reluctant to discuss right now.--<
Why'd you put that there? Is it supposed to wow us? You're just talking about a game here, and you have all these conspiratorial tones about you.

The rest of the post is one of the least subtle piles of propaganda I've come across. A VOTE! What kind of election doesn't allow more than one choice? ->Instead of spawning a debate, I would like to propose a vote.--< Stifling dissenting voices, sure that'll win you lots of votes and keep debate to a minimum. It worked in the Soviet Union for years.
The whole thing reads like a fluffed up reminder that you're going to take your ball and go home. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt as I wasn't used to your writing style and might have been interpretting it incorrectly, but as has been shown by your subsequent posts you sound quite a bit like a mouthpiece for someone that was banned from this discussion board more than one time. I'd be carefull if you want to continue using BrainKing if I were you. That's a big time violation of the user agreement.

In your next post dated 21. August 2004, 05:57:52, you reply to my questioning of your "vote". You again say how non-negative you are and your posts. Quoting-
->Also, if I keep getting messages sent to me that are NEGATIVE...to put it nicely...I will post them on this board for everyone to see and then maybe everyone can comment on them. I don't post alot because of the negativity on this DB, thats why in the Gothic Fellowship's DB's I post there--<
Just what are you insinuating here, Mr. Positive? I've never even heard of you, nor have I read any posts mentioning you in a bad way on this board. I looked through a lot of posts trying to find mention of you. The only person that did, was EdTrice. He talks about your skills at Gothic Chess and about making a playing card with you on it. That's it. I didn't find any disparaging remarks directed towards you. Especially during the flame war that went on just before your re-emergence to posting on this board. Oh, what's this? I missed it the first go around. It doesn't sound too positive to me.
>-ChessCarpenter (2210) Rename this DB 15. August 2004, 12:59:33
How about renaming this board to "The VENTING Board"! Come here and vent on anything!--
How nice and helpful you are.
You got me now, what're you up to?

Your post where you ask about my problem is. My problem is I think the patent is invalid and you guys are trying to profit from other people's work and ideas. It might be true that you put a lot of time and energy into your cause, but that doesn't mean you own the game and are trying to make it rich with some legal shenanigans that fool all of us lay people into going along with it. Take a game like Dark Chess and the playing of it on a computer between two people. Now that's a real innovation, but it's still a game that's over a hundred years old with a couple of rule changes. I don't see anyone trying to cash in on it like you guys are. Be happy your game is getting played. Sell books on how to play it, or software, but the game itself is way older than you and your patent. After visiting the link with the patent, I came across ways to have patents re-examined. Unfortunately the fee for an "ex parte" re-examination is $2520.00. So I won't be contesting the patent any time soon. They also mention that the commisioner of the patent office can just open up a patent query on his own, but then he'd have to have a reason to do so. I imagine a game would be pretty low on his to do list. So it would appear your patent will stand unchallenged until you guys try to enforce it against someone playing "your" game without your permission. Then you'll be the ones on the spot and will have to prove it's a good patent. Obviously it must've worked once, since you got the patent in the first place. Or's it easy to get a patent and hard to lose it?