Question: Protecting Intellectual Property - Gaming

Posted by $ AJAshinoff 8 years ago to Business
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Anyone at the Gulch familiar with ensuring the legal protection of a custom developed game? I'm comfortable, mostly, with copyright protection for books(ebook) but not so much with games. I had a long time contact that I'd hoped to ask questions but she insisted on $400 for 1 hour a time to provide me with a worksheet guideline I could follow.

I'm hoping to ask a few questions to be pointed in the right direction so I can do it myself to minimize (not eliminate)( costs.


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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years ago
    I'm a software developer, not a lawyer. We copyright our software and do not distribute source code. You automatically own the copyright. I'm told that actually registering your copyright makes it easier to sue.

    Having a legal right to protect your software does not automatically protect your software. You have to enforce that right. The problem, of course, with a game is who are you going to sue? Are you going to sue some poor schmuck who copies his friend's version? How many thousand dollars are you going to spend on this? What will you get back.

    Most people who need to protect software use some copy protection mechanism to prevent the copies from being made, often some online registration.

    I don't know a lot about what game designers use. In our case we have a product with relatively few custom installations which gives us more control. Our software costs from $5000 to as much as $100,000 or more (far too rarely). We lock the installation to a specific set of hardware with a registration process that for obvious reasons I won't go into too deeply. I did roll my own in this case. There might be better tools available.

    The nature of your game, how you expect to install it and how you are going to play it will give you some clues as to the tools you can use to protect it.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years ago
      Thanks that does help. The only truly unique aspect of this project is its sci-fi back story in a horror setting and the futuristic period when the game is said to take place.

      I intend to run the majority of the game on hosted servers rented (co-located) at a game server rental agency I'm acquainted with for many years. The client should only have those elements of the game as it related to his/her specific local profile. I guess what I'm mainly concerned with is that my title and specific and unique implementation of the concept is exclusive to me (my LLC).
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      • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years ago
        So your situation is relatively simple. The server side of the game code will never leave your control so copying is not a problem. The client side is useless without the server unless someone reverse engineers the protocol and builds their own copy of the server.

        Protecting the game elements is beyond my specific expertise. Personally, I don't worry too much about people copying my work that's in the market place because the development time is such that they start their development significantly behind mine and if they do try to copy my work, it's a moving target and I have an inherent time advantage.
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        • Posted by $ 8 years ago
          I'm considering, and this is somewhat beyond my ability, having the server generate an encrypted key for each item a player owns/purchases/barters. I'm thinking in this should reduce end-users mass producing critical items in the game and them selling them to other players.

          I took enough programming classes (VAX Unix, basic, pascal, and C++) when I was in college to know that my strength is networking. Still, I understand the logic and can work fairly effectively as a project manager (or in this instance a game producer).

          Thanks again!
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          • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years ago
            If the universe is closed such that all objects in it are maintained on servers under your control, then no one can introduce objects into it from an external source. They are limited to in-game resources for doing this.

            Now there have been situations where people in game build resources and then use out of game forums for selling them to other players for real money with the resources subsequently delivered in-game (or not to much consternation). This can get ugly and many designers rule it against the Terms of Service so that if it becomes prominent players can be banned.

            This is hard to solve with software because they are legitimately created objects.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years ago
    Trump has made it acceptable to be who you are and say what you think, whether its rational or not. Once out there, ideas can be debated and thought about and minds can change. Hidden subconscious ideas can stay around and never change even though they are quite irrational and easily refuted.

    That said, I am not a fan of this "intellectual property" argument (patents in particular). I can see trademarks in that people might buy my "brand" by looking for my trademark (for instance, I buy dog food by looking for the same artwork on the bag each time I shop for it)

    I DONT get the idea of forbidding others from making something for 20 years, just because I was the first one to get the government to give me a patent. Others could have thought of it independently before me or after me, but I would be using the government to prevent others from using the results of THEIR thoughts. I just dont like that, particularly in this age of "patent trolls" who patent everything and never commercialize them- but prevent me from commercializing a similar idea I thought of independently.
    This notion is politically incorrect, but thats how I see it.
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years ago
      At least from his question, I think what AJ is trying to protect lies more in the copyright vein. I don't think he's trying to keep anyone from creating a game based on any sci-fi story, or any horror story, or any future story, just the specific one in his game. Much as you can't create a game around the show Firefly without acquiring the IP rights to do so, you wouldn't be able to create a game around his story. Anybody can create a spaceship game.
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      • Posted by term2 8 years ago
        The devil is in the details as they say. Theres so much more to making a good game or story than the original idea anyway. Its the way its done, the details of execution, the artwork, etc that really makes a good game or story.

        With the products I make as an engineer, its rarely the idea that makes it successful by itself. Its the way its executed and the details that get people to want it. Competitors usually dont understand that and simply copy (like the chinese do all the time).
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 8 years ago
    As I understand it most creations today fall under the Berne convention which gives an automatic all rights reserved under your country's copyright terms. I don't think you need to take more action for normal copyright. The act of publishing the game gives a timestamp basis on the copyright. But of course IANAL. I am pretty sure though you don't need to pay any legal fees here.

    Now if you also want to protect some innovations within the game you probably need to seek patent protection for those. Filing a provisional yourself is <= $200 the last time I looked.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years ago
      Its likely that the only truly unique aspect of this project will be it concept. I'm not entirely sure how to code-in consequential rules in order to protect them. I'm not the programmer, but consequential rules would just be a series of logical IF-THEN written in C++ or using unreal engines blueprints (essentially Graphical C++).
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years ago
    uh-hellooo.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years ago
      I knew Dale was a lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights. I assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that he was more specialized toward invention rather than software development.
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      • Posted by dbhalling 8 years ago
        WS advice is pretty good and standard. Many software companies never file for a copyright. It is not necessary to do so unless you are going to sue someone, but there are advantages to filing a copyright before publication. Also put a copyright notice in the code and on the screen when the game starts

        I assume your game is going to have a name and a trademark may be as important or more important than your copyright. You can build up common law trademarks and put people on notice by using a superscript TM. If the game does well you will want to file for a federal trademark registration. That is not real expensive.
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