Thanks for your time. My friends and I are considering making a game or a mod as portfolio padding and just for the enjoyment factor. Considering that this will probably not be anywhere near a AAA title, I realize the legalities are less pressing, but I still would like to do things right, if possible. I know how peoples' memories can get fuzzy and weird when situations arise, so I'd like to get everything out in the open and on paper right up front, if we're going to actually do this. What is the best way to protect my ideas and/or produced content in a situation where at least half, if not the majority of the other participants will not be people I know face-to-face?

First you and your friends have to execute a collaboration agreement. See Tom Buscaglia's indie startup kit at gameattorney.com.
Secondly, your work is automatically copyrighted but if you think you might need the extra protection, you can register the copyright at uspto.gov.

Our budget is only time, unfortunately. I'll see if Google picks up anything about collaboration agreement.

Thanks for the answer.

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Original post by a_pedestrian Our budget is only time, unfortunately. I'll see if Google picks up anything about collaboration agreement.

Doubtful. Try reading the numerous other threads here on this forum on the topic of indie development and ownership issues that arise therein.

Since the real question is "What is the best way to protect my ideas and/or produced content in a situation where at least half, if not the majority of the other participants will not be people I know face-to-face... FOR FREE," the answer is "hmm... tricky." But it's doable if you inform yourself of the issues most others in your situation have run into, and write an agreement that sets forth the understandings of all parties as to who owns what.

You and your friends not lawyers, you are unwilling to pay for one, and yet you want legal protections.

You really should get a proper attorney. If you can't afford it, you cannot afford to be in business, period.

If you refuse to get a proper attorney (which is a sign your project is probably going to fail), then the next best thing you can do is to get all of your expectations in writing amongst yourselves. Do not try to put your agreement in legalese, since many legal terms have strong definitions and it is easy to misuse them.

Prepare a clear, well written document about what is expected, that they understand there are legal rights such as copyright and want them all to be bound to the game, that everybody understands that they are assigning all the rights to the game, that they know they are giving up those rights, and want you to be responsible for all those rights, including the right to sell the game and all those rights. Make sure it is plainly written in simple English, not legalese.

If you want to assign payments or otherwise compensate people, figure out a good way to do this that you won't regret later. For example, you may want to have the rights-holder be responsible to distribute those payments in any ratio that they see fit, regardless of their actual contribution to the project.

Get them to sign it. Make sure you keep a copy of these documents filed away until you can afford to talk with a lawyer.

When you do eventually get a lawyer, have the lawyer review them. You'll need to get new documents put together at that point, and get new signatures from everybody still with the projects.

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Original post by Tom Sloper Quote: Original post by an ape Our budget is only time, unfortunately. I'll see if Google picks up anything about collaboration agreement. Doubtful.

I retract that. I found several writers' collaboration agreements that way. They'd be useful as guides. But like F Rob said, the language you draft could be problematic, should a falling out occur. That's possible anyway. But as long as anybody has the right to use the collaborative project as a portfolio piece, and nobody's expecting unrealistic profits, self-drafted language could still be OK.

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Original post by Tom Sloper First you and your friends have to execute a collaboration agreement. See Tom Buscaglia's indie startup kit at gameattorney.com. Secondly, your work is automatically copyrighted but if you think you might need the extra protection, you can register the copyright at uspto.gov.

US Copyright Office-- Online. USPTO is for patents and trademarks, although it does provide a link to the copyright office.

Fortunately online registration is fairly inexpensive. Bear in mind that the copyright application gives you the opportunity to spell out the percentage of ownership in the copyright by the joint authors.

Patent and trademark applications are both cost prohibitive in your case. None the less, even without registration the trademark may still have commercial value and should be accounted for as far as ownership. This isn't true for any patent you may want to claim in the project-- patents absolutely require the completion of a patent application and approval by the USPTO.

As for the collaboration agreement, you'll really want to talk to someone who has experience in game and mod transactions. As Frob said, you run a serious risk when you draft these things on your own-- not only because people tend to copy and paste from form agreements without understanding what's in them, but also because there are a LOT of interests and rights in a single piece of game IP.

Be very careful about using a form agreement. 1) it probably won't apply to your specific project; 2) there will be provisions that you do not understand and may or may not need-- one example is indemnity, which is a VERY scary thing if you're the one promising it; 3) you want something that clearly and specifically spells out your needs. You won't get this in a form agreement. Form agreements tend to only cover the generals.

Seriously consider frob's suggestion and write out your own short form agreement that spells out, in plain English, exactly how you want to divvy up rights and interests. Do your homework. Learn what rights are involved. Make sure everyone signs and faxes the signed copy back to you.

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Original post by madelelaw US Copyright Office-- Online. USPTO is for patents and trademarks, although it does provide a link to the copyright office.

Doh! Quite right, I sit corrected.

Thanks for the advice, I was actually considering writing it in the format given on the examples, so I'll steer clear of that.

The real issue now is that some parties are not amicable to giving up rights (even duplication rights) to what they submit (I can't really blame them) - I'm not sure how to propose a division of value should (unlikely) the project become commercial at one time in the future. How do you quantify how hard it is to draw or model an asset vs how hard it is to code a jump script?

First-- what rights are we talking about? In and to the entire project, or the rights to the individual contributions?

Second-- Are they fighting because they're afraid to give up specific rights, or because they don't know *what* they're giving up (if anything?)

Joint authors own a work jointly. If you are all listed as collaborators in the registration, you are joint authors to the work proportionate to the percentages you set out. That means your ownership in the work is divided. As for quantifying it-- that's a project-by-project determination and it comes down to what you can negotiate. What's YOUR opinion on the valuation between modeling versus code? Another gauge you can usually safely rely upon is time. How much time are you and your counterparts contributing to the project?

If joint ownership isn't appealing to you, another option may be to have individual contributors license their contributions on a non-exclusive (or exclusive, depending on the contributor) basis to the project and/or you (if you're leading the project). The allows the author to retain an ownership interest in their contribution without pulling away from the project all together.