Openness and Sudoku
The New York Times is running an article on the man and the company behind sudoku. Interestingly, the brain power behind sudoku, Mr. Kaji, wasn’t able to make much money because he didn’t trademark the name “sudoku,” but because the IP wasn’t protected he feels that popularity of the game exploded:
While no one knows how much revenue is generated by the global sudoku business, most agree it has easily topped $250 million over the last two years from an estimated 80 million devotees. The New York Times syndicate provides a variety of logic puzzles, including sudoku, kakuro and others, for newspapers and Web sites around the world.
Nikoli received only a sliver of that money. Mr. Kaji says his private company, with just 20 employees, had annual sales of about $4 million.
Sudoku’s popularity in the United States caught Mr. Kaji by such surprise that he did not try to get the trademark there until it was too late. As a result, Nikoli receives no royalties from sudoku-related sales overseas by other publishers.
In hindsight, though, he now thinks that oversight was a brilliant mistake. The fact that no one controlled sudoku’s intellectual property rights let the game’s popularity grow unfettered, Mr. Kaji says. Nikoli does not plan to trademark other new games, either, in hopes this will also help them take off.
“This openness is more in keeping with Nikoli’s open culture,†said Mr. Kaji, who sat on a sofa in his Tokyo office among pillows adorned with printed faces of racehorses. “We’re prolific because we do it for the love of games, not for the money.â€
While this might just be a good marketing face to show, it’s core aligns with the philosophy of open source, copyleft, GNU, etc. If you don’t control the IP, a product has a chance to explode. If you do it for the love of the product, then maybe your reward will be greater in the end.
Copyright, IP, International, News | paul | 
March 21, 2007 4:34 pm
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By Chris, March 28, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
Sigh, he should have done so…. he would have been a billionaire by now
By Daniel, August 1, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Openness and Sudoku, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong
By BArko, July 14, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
Excuse me for off-topic but with which graphic program did you design the header? It looks awesome … *wanna have 2*