Hey all; Once someone is finshed with the storyline for a video game, how would you go about getting a copyright (or patent? I dunno which one) on your story, the characters, plot events. Whatever! I know nothing about protecting my creative ideas, and I need to find out fast! ;-) I visited the US copyright website, and near as I can tell, I can submit a story, along with $3, and it will be protected by copyright for my entire lifespan + 50 years, right? Well, I didn't see anything about video games -- only novels. Does a video game story count as a novel? Also, how COMPLETE must a story be before it can be protected by copyright? Does it have to be completely written, plot, dialogue, and all? Or can it have a rough plot line and character names? Thanks in advance, peoples.

AFAIK, everything is copywritten by default. you have to explicilty state that you are relinquishing your copywrite, so you shouldnt have to pay any money. im open to correction though

but you could always add (c) "your name" "the year" just to be sure.

and its not a patent...

Try looking at the US Copyrights website. There are FAQs and other information on copyright available there including the reasons and process on registering a copyright.

http://www.copyright.gov/

I'm not very fluent in legalese, so let me recap what I read and maybe someone can tell me if I get the jist of it, or not. ;-)

So, anything I write that is complete (i.e. a finished game story) is automatically considered to be under copyright protection, right? The only reason I would send the copyright office some money is to get extra benefits?

I'm still unclear on some of the specifics though (maybe I can ask the moderator to move this to a board that deals more with legal aspects?) like what happens when I have my current situation: a lot of important plot events, characters and a unique world mythology, but not quite connected in a single timeline yet. Are those ideas also protected, or not until I finish the complete story?

Thatnks again fellas (or ladies).

that is what i think applies. do not quote me. you really want to get something more definite than my possibly inaccurate view.

I'd check that copyright website, people had said that (c)'s aren't too hard to obtain. Patents are tight-assed because you're claiming that something is revolutionary. Copyrights are much more exclusive to the IP's context. You can't copyright the name "Joe," but you CAN copyright "Joe" in the context of "he's a big monkey in the movie script 'mighty joe young'" so that someone can't go make "Mighty Jim Young" after seeing your movie without assessing you royalty fees for the concept.

IP (intellectual property) sparks debates often, the thing most people in the game industry are worried about is having their IP stolen by someone who can pay more lawyers to defend than the victim can to attack.

I know when you submit concepts to publishers ranging from a character description to an entire game pitch, you have to basically sign away your IP rights on that material in case they were working on something similar, so that when you get turned down and see their game come out 3 months later, you can't go sueing them.

Oops, come to think of it, forget the royalties bit. I think that applies to trademarks.

Or I could be full of ****.