Hello! Is it legal to use themes, subjects, names and stories from classic novels like "20000 leagues under the sea" inside games. I mean are there people who own the copyright for this books?

I really don't know for sure. HOWEVER, 20000 leauges under the sea is still being sold by publishers, probably implying they have kept up the copyright.

With songs, I know that if they're old enough and the copyright is dropped, they instantly become public domain. Assuming of course that a publisher is not still selling the content

From my understanding every book written prior to about 1920 has since gone out of copyright, so everything written by Jules Verne should be okay. However you can't use anything from anyone's interpretation of a Jules Verne book; you can't include stills from a recent tele-movie, for example, as that will be under copyright. Also sometimes new adaptations make changes to characters to give them copyright and trademark protection, such as made to the title character in the movie Van Helsing, so you'll have to make sure you're basing your adaptation from the original source and not a derivative.

TrapperZoid makes a very good point. And I also think I should mention that you cannot produce a game strictly on the book, of course, they have different formats.

By now, I would imagine so many variations have been done, it would be hard to find a new idea without inadvertanly "stealing" someone elses idea.

Thanks for info.
Information about copyright period for different countries can be found here:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html

Have you noticed how many Wizard of Oz spinoff stuff has come out in recent years? That's becauze Oz is in the public domain.

Also, did you know that Call of Cthulhu is somehow in the public domain? You can write your own Cthulhu stories.

20,000 Leagues is definitely in public domain. Public domain is great!

Quote: Original post by TheKrust
I really don't know for sure. HOWEVER, 20000 leauges under the sea is still being sold by publishers, probably implying they have kept up the copyright.

With songs, I know that if they're old enough and the copyright is dropped, they instantly become public domain. Assuming of course that a publisher is not still selling the content

Anything out of copyright is in the public domain, whether or not a publisher is selling it.

Publishers will sell anything people will buy. I bought a copy of War of the Worlds a few months back, even though it's out of copyright, because I wanted it in book form.

In fact the publishers are selling it in part because it is in the public domain. "Classics" may sell quite cheaply but on the plus side there is no author to pay a royalty to.

The only problem with doing a classic is that you have no ownership of the original IP so others can also do the same. There are several Sherlock Holmes games around, ditto Robin Hood, etc etc.

It's also including in Project Gutenberg, which states it's not copyrighted (in the US, at least): http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2488

I know this is wikipedia and it is not always 100% reliable, but heres a link to some books/characters/movies, it claims are PD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain


What I would do is look here and then do some research into how that story or character is being used today and how viable it would be to use sources from any items on that PD list.