Hi. I don't know what do because I don't want to start/register a game company but I want to use team name or game studio name for the game's I make and copyright the games under that name. I know that the copyright isn't that quaranteed if I can't prove that I have made the copyrighted product but that's alright because I only make freeware games. But what I want is to use game studio name and copyright under it and have domain called by that name. So my question is can I just call my self owner of XGame Studios and write copyright notices "copyright 2005 XGame Studios". Or can I only create development team and copyright under it? Sorry if my question is confusing, I hope you see what I mean. Thank you.

No you can't. Copyright belongs to you or to another party (person or company) if you assign the rights to them via a binding agreement. You can't assign rights to a non-existent "company".

If you want to put the "company" name/logo on the game and on your web site then go ahead but just put the copyright notice with your name in small text at the bottom.

Ok thanks Dan.
But I have seen copyright noticeses like "Copyright thisGamesDevelopmentTeam". What about that?

Thanks.

Quote: Original post by GCoda
Ok thanks Dan.
But I have seen copyright noticeses like "Copyright thisGamesDevelopmentTeam". What about that?

Thanks.

Just because someone writes it doesn't mean it is legally correct. If it is just a made up company name then it is meaningless.

Ok thanks for clearing that out.

Just to add, if you are going to stay in this business, it is in your long term interests to form a company and a brand, and use the legal status of pro forma incorporation, or whatever form of entity for doing business you use, so you do have some muscle in declaring and protection of your intellectual property. And, it has an added bonus of giving confidence to the team you have because of the implied strength of the formal entity. As an aside, I've always found showing a few of the marketing strategems to people not associated with marketing gives them a sense of excitement about where they work, and incentivizes quality production, at least you hope for that. ;)

Adventuredesign