By the way Command-And-Conquer was a copy of Dune 2 - you seldom hear mention of Dune 2 anymore but those guys were the inventors of the genre.

I think if you invent a new game concept and turn out an okay game, then someone else uses the concept, builds a GREAT game that reaches a worldwide audience, no one will remember the original game...

Quote:

Original post by serratemplar You can copy right the characters in the game, the name of the game (and of your company), you can patent the game code.

You can't copyright a name, but you could trademark it.

And depending on the idea you may be able to patent it, afterall Atari patented ghost cars in racing games.

Actually I talked to someone at Midway. Supposedly they have the patent on ghost cars.

http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5269687'.WKU.&OS=PN/5269687&RS=PN/5269687 - System and method for recursive driver training filed by Atari in 1993.

System and method of vehicle competition with enhanced ghosting features filed by Midway in 2002.

So, looks like they both have one, either way I think patenting stuff like this is a disgrace.

Please could people responding on legal aspects preface with their own level of legal expertise? Personally I'd like to know which of the posters are lawyers :).

IANAL, but I've been trained in contract and IP law (helpful so that I could make decisions in business situations without having to phone a lawyer ALL the time), so I have only a little knowledge here. Best thing is to refer to your textbooks each time :), but off the top of my head:

- Copyright: "right over copies of the original work". If something is not a "copy" but instead "inspired by" the original work, then copyright law give you ZERO protection. If something started of as a copy, and then was morphed into something substantially different, you ARE protected - because the original act of copying was illegal.

However, if the new thing is created from scratch, perhaps by looking at the original, but never precisely copying it, copyright is irrelevant. Hence the interest in "clean room implementations" of things == you can prove that the original was not copied. But usually proving non-copying is not trivial. Many lawyers trip up on failing to prove/disprove because of their own lack of skill. Good ones do things like subpoena source code, or copying bytes from an image, and doing statistical analysis to establish whether one was probably a copy of the other. There is lots of relevant history in Maps and Dictionaries - publishers used to deliberately introduce errors into their works so that when they thought someone had copied them they could "prove" it by saying "look, you even have EXACTLY the same errors as we put in deliberately!".

- Patents: "granting of an exclusive monopoly". Basically, the idea was that you gave the ruling monarch some cash, and he gave you the right to ignore all laws on monopolies and would guarantee to prevent anyone else from competing with you. That fundamental idea is, fairly obviously, a pretty dangerous one. For a while people managed to make it encourage innovation, but a few corrupt bureaucrats (especially in the USA) have screwed that up completely and in many places it's now FUBAR.

Games, however, are considered "artistic works" making them inherently unpatentable. You can get around this by pretending it's not a game, and getting it patented as a non-game, but very few games have any value beyond entertainment. I have seen several patents for games that are worthless, since they will be trivially destroyed if they ever go to court. I suppose it makes the patenter's ego a bit bigger to be able to say "I own a patent; I invented something!" but other than that it's usually an expensive waste of time for a game.

IIRC most patent offices have been underfunded, and the US was the worst of all, unluckily having a terrifyingly large number of patent applications (the curse of having an inventive population!), creating a huge backlog, which is why they started allowing pretty much any patent application. Bear in mind that a large number of patents get invalidated each year because the owner tries to extort money and the victim easily proves the patent is invalid.

Patenting is tricky and expensive - and as you can see it is also never a guaranteed thing, neither for patent-owner nor competitor. Unless you have at least $100,000 to spend on legal fees I wouldn't bother patenting a game - it will cost you approx $20,000 to patent worldwide, taking at least 2 years (!) before you can tell anyone about it, and if you don't have the extra $80,000 then you won't be able to afford to defend the patent if someone does infringe it.

- Games: This is harsh, but ... who really cares about your game idea? Who would be stupid enough to try and steal it? If "good ideas" were what made games profitable then 98% of professional games developers would be rolling in money (almost everyone working in the industry knows games very well and has at least one really cool game idea. Seriously - I've heard hundreds of great ideas). Games fall neatly into the "2% inspiration, 98% perspiration" category; OK, so that's a gross generalizaion, and yes, there are some exceptions, although as technology and player-expectations move on these become rarer and rarer. Maybe your game is one of those exceptions, in which case you're only option is to make the game ASAP before someone else invents it too! In theory, patents would be your only protection, but thank [insert deity here] that they don't work for games (yet)! [IMHO patents desperately need reform, and if no-one can think of anything better, they need to be completely invalidated instead!]

In reality, a great game idea is worthless. If you turn that idea into a 150-page game-design document then you are finally getting close to having some value (and legally this is reflected in the fact that you can get some protection over such a document, though you have to be a bit cunning in how you make it).

Now, a *demo* of a game has real value. Even better is a demo of a game where you can prove that X thousand people are already playing the game - and that's why it's this point where publishers will give away millions of dollars to people who often don't even finish the game, because the completion of a demo proves there really is something there.

The registrar of Copyrights recognized with the advent of technology so many more things than just traditional print publishing formats were copyrightable, so they expanded the definition of what was copyrightable about ten years ago.

Just specifically name the type of idea that you are copyrighting in the copyright form, and document the heck out of the details, in as nice and concise a manner as you can, just follow the forms.

Clickoid

Generally speaking though, most ideas for games in the documented pre-production stage format are generally simply not released to anyone needing the data, and then it's incorporation into the final game results in the software being copyrighted, patented or trademarked, whatever protection schema the producer/publisher legal counsel deems neccesary and appropriate. There is a paper the office positions on here:
Clickoid2 It is specifically about databases, but how far is a database from an application?

Also, learn about living copyright creation, letters of authorship claim to a trusted attorney, and the WGA idea registration service. Just cover your A$$

When I get around to building my /adventuredesign web here, I will place upon it my document entitled "Ironclad Copyright Protection" but remember the first rule of copyright protection: "Your copyright protection is who you tell your idea to."

Adventuredesign


[Edited by - adventuredesign on August 2, 2004 11:07:55 PM]

That Midway one is insane. They have then in Super Mario Kart for Super Nintendo.