There's also this from Wikipedia: "If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain."
This has nothing to do with the patent.
One bizarre aspect of National Pastime is that Van Beek never bothered to register a copyright for his game. It's strange because registering a copyright would have been faster, cheaper, and easier than the patent process.
You can't steal something that is in the public domain. NP patent was expired.
You are correct - but it's not because the patent expired. It's because Van Beek never registered for a formal copyright.
This website has a helpful table: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain
There's also this from Wikipedia: "If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain."
This has nothing to do with the patent.
One bizarre aspect of National Pastime is that Van Beek never bothered to register a copyright for his game. It's strange because registering a copyright would have been faster, cheaper, and easier than the patent process.