I was not sure where to put this post...so I figured I would throw it in here. There are quite a few people who post on here about creating a team to make some hot new game. 99% of these people are looking for others like them who can all get together and make a game - with no payment expected, unless of course the game actually sells. So here is my question. How do you deal with copyright? Theoretically - " According to the law, every piece af art or writing produced is automatically the property of the person who produced it. It is called "Natural Copyright", and that automatic copyright can only be transferred by properly signed contract, not by verbal arrangement and specifically not by implication." So, in groups starting out, has anyone had to deal with this issue...and how did they? Justin

Disclaimer, IANAL

Well, I''m not in the situation you describe, but I do know about copyrights(my first business deal did not succeed because of them). I don''t know how they''re dealing with it, but not thinking about it first is a big problem(especially if you have big egos). Anyway, on larger open source projects here''s how the Free Software Foundation reccomends you deal with it. First off the GPL requires others to release any changes under the GPL, second, they ask that you and contributors to a project assign the copyright of the pieces to the FSF, that way they can sue people and enforce the rights granted by the GPL.

In these small projects, every creator owns a piece of the pie(but only the piece they made), which means they could stop anyone from using their work. If those groups succeed, I highly reccomend they find a good lawyer and sign a well written contract about the rights, maybe form a limited partnership or limited liability corporation to actually sell the sucker.

This is something you need to get sorted out at the start. I know of at least one professional team that has been screwed up because they did not get this stuff sorted.


Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions