What game designers should know about copyrights and trademarks | Zachary Strebeck

Zachary Strebeck, a lawyer who focuses on the laws that affect games, gives his thoughts on what designers and publishers should be aware of when it comes to copyrights and trademarks.

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[ezraclark]

Useful info, a lot of people get distracted by the high minded design part of game making and don't think to put in the legwork.

[andyandrew]

Why it didn't got thousands of views ? This video game me free information that solved all my questions.

[GeeJayGamesOfficial]

That intent to use sounds interesting. We our a new game design team, and we are not maketing and promoting yet, as we want to get our trademarks locked in. We're thinking of trademarking our game name, and company name. We've so far trademarked our game name in the UK. We're wondering should we trademark it elsewhere, and then the same for our company name too.

[Frederickam]

Question. My tabletop game has the same name and images that are identical to my copyrighted book. To my understanding, the name of my game, as well as the images, are protected under the copyright of the book. Is this true?

[stillbuyvhs]

Dr Pepper's actually a few years older than Coke.

[dreamingacacia]

it's not "unfortunately" that the "game mechanics" are not gonna protected by the copyright. Game mechanics are finite and therefore required to be public knowledge. Same as common words which nobody can "own" specific word. "Character powers" can be protected, though not mechanically but same as any Marvel characters which got protected for the very specific things such as Iron man. While you can have color schemes and simple shapes similar to Iron man, you must have something distinguish enough from the direct usage of Iron man for the "common fair use" which covered all the combination of colors or simple shapes but not for distinct characters. That being said, who own Slime from Dragon Quest? Blue ball with eyes. Obviously you can use blue ball with eyes and call it slime, but not the distinct face of the Dragon Quest slimes.

I'll be honest, law stuffs are just too stupid. People are always there to exploit others for their own benefits. It's the way of uncivilized people to make some gains.