Legal Question

Goury: I'll take the ending twist of humor as a closure-willing argument in the case that opposed us.

AS Mr E Bear rightfully said, court functioning around the world allow you to file statements and have a judge decide if the request is legitimate or not.

In the process of your law suit, you brought me a lot of media attention and coverage which allowed me to push my brand further and adopt a commercial strategy because I knew your case wouldn't stand according to the actual laws and procedures.

Thank you a lot <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

By relying on Notch's article I wasn't by any mean saying "this guy is the truth", but stressing/displaying an opinion (not a fact) that had been nicely argueed in my opinion (again). Also, yes simplifying/popularizing the subject help sustaining the discussion.

I'm not sure if you were trolling at that point, in doubt I prefer clarifying that point here.

It's nice to be utopian, I've been one myself for a very long time, and still am on some subjects.

Unfortunately, in our "branch of business" (game making), there are certain cold facts that we must face, and the sooner the better.

Legal functioning being one of those facts. And to be honest, it's just another skill to obtain in our game making toolbox.

The whole ip laws thing is about pure trolling and nothing else. Face it.

Conspiracies aside, what about global IP issues? These days, anything from game software to hardware are easily duplicated by anyone skilled enough around the world. Let's focus on games - like HTML5 games. Does anyone have any experience about issues with game rippers who live beyond the reach of US law / influence? I'm talking about game devs who think that X game is good, easy to rip, and translate to a mobile platform because the game is a Flash game at the moment. And it's the game rippers live in a place that's beyond the reach the law protecting the original copyright holders, ex: China. There's an issue where you make a product first, but a copycat can claim they made the first "type" of product where they live in, such as the company who tried to pull their fake "iPhone 5" as the first company to have such a product in China well before Apple's official launch.

I mean, if we factor in the different laws around the world, is there a possibly of being sued by a copycat in their own country because they can simply try to screw you over your own product?

admir: This is a concern for big developers (like EA) and hardware companies (like Apple) but not generally all that relevant for smaller independent or hobbyist developers.

Yes, your game might be copied by people in other countries -- but it's likely those places weren't your target market anyway. You don't have the budget or resources for much -- if any -- localisation or for foreign advertising, so you're not really losing out on potential sales in those territories, and you can prevent them from distributing to your target market by having their content removed from Google Play, the iOS App Store, Steam, etc.

You can be sued by anyone for anything, and although you may not be able to stop them from selling their knock-off product in their jurisdiction, if you genuinely developed and released your product first it will be relatively trivial to quash and claims they might level against you.

Goury: You might not like intellectual property laws, but they're regularly enforced in courts all around the world, and like them or not they're the reality that many developers -- excepting those in some countries where these laws are absent or poorly enforced -- should be aware of and deal with. I don't mean to be at all offensive here, but to simply claim outright that the legal concept of intellectual property doesn't exist is nothing but foolish ignorance. We regularly see examples of these rights being enforced; you can disagree with them on principle, but claiming they don't exist is simply sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality.

You are actually somewhat correct, but it's that sort of nit-picking trivial correctness that's not actually relevant or helpful to anyone: you're right that no-one is likely to be run into legal problems specifically citing "intellectual property" as the cause of action -- they won't receive a C&D or be sued for IP-rights violation -- but if they do the wrong things they do risk receiving a C&D or being sued for "trademark violation" or "copyright infringement" or even "patent violation", and -- even if the term doesn't hold specific legal meaning -- it's a useful term because thanks to common usage everyone knows exactly what someone means when they say it; that trademark, copyright, patents, or some other less commonly cited laws are being discussed.

jbadams i dont like ignorant people who dreams up nonexistent terms out of cunning robbers.

There is lot of laws about:

• patents
• copy rights
• monopoly backing

and even more.

Yet this all different laws and uniting em only makes impossible to understand whats really going on.

This is exacly what cunning thieves want to achieve ? no one understands why and what for they should pay so people just shut up and pay for anything they make you belive.

Just face the fact that non-physical things cant be property by definition of property.

Non-physical thigs cant be owned unless some law tells that you have or have not some rights to do or not to do some things around some thing. Yet laws cant create life on mars, they can pnly tell you what to do and how to live.

I have nothing against patent and copy right laws itself yet their current realization is awful and opposed their original idea. Those who should be protected is now guilty party and those from guilty party should be defend is now tall in the saddle.

As I said -- but I'll repeat it here to obviously separate it from the wall of text above -- you are technically correct that "intellectual property" isn't really a legal term, and that no one will ever receive documents or be taken to court for something citing it.

You can receive a C&D or be taken to court for violating copy rights, trademark, patent protection, etc., and rather than listing all of these separately people (including many in the legal profession) refer to them using the blanket term "intellectual property" -- and everyone knows very well that they mean those other laws when they use the term.

I don't think this is unclear at all, or causes undue confusion to anyone who takes the time to do some basic research, and I think usage of such a blanket term greatly simplifies any conversation about these matters.

You are technically correct, but on such a trivial detail that it simply doesn't have any real bearing on anything real people are doing. They know very well that references to "intellectual property" refer to a collection of other laws.

What would be the implication of using a plugin or custom behaviour in your game, which someone has posted on these forums? Or say asking for help and subsequently using the method they have proposed?

Toby12: The plugins and behaviors all come with their own licensing normally. So that is to be checked for each plugin. If not mentioned, you can assume it's open for use, and it's always pleasant that it'd be credited in some sort in the final game.

As for the answers, as long as it's posted on the forum it can be assumed that the person who answered/gave away an example did so knowing it would be reused, and so it's opened for anyone to use in their own games.

Thanks for all of the great feedback guys! I am really appreciative of the time you took to answer my question, and I have been provided with a lot of information, and I am grateful :)

To dredge this up. Does anyone have any examples of proposals for using someone's IP?

What about trivia games in regards to trademarks? Surely you can use "Microsoft", "Super Mario", etc. as answers in a trivia game without legal repercussion. Especially if you wrote the questions yourself.

—, yes that's ok. because your not infringing on any IP. Your not including graphics, sounds, story, characters. Your just making reference on a company or product basis.

You can ask, Who is the Hero of Time? and make a reference to Link. You would however be infringing if you included a picture of Link, MS or Mario.

It's only illegal if you get caught   <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

so is robbing a bank only illegal if you get caught <img src="smileys/smiley13.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

jayderyu I don't think you are correct. I'm pretty sure that names are trademarks too and can't be used without permission.

What about trivia games in regards to trademarks? Surely you can use "Microsoft", "Super Mario", etc. as answers in a trivia game without legal repercussion.

I did some digging and the answer appears to be "maybe." There are a few short discussions on the legal advice site Avvo, one of which is here:

Why is it Legal to Create Trivia Games of Other People's Tradmarks?

The crux is whether your game falls under "nominative use," defined as using "the trademark of another as a reference to describe the other product, or to compare it to their own."

This defense was first described in the case of

New Kids on the Block vs News America Publishing, Inc., although it was further developed in later cases. As Wikipedia summarizes, the following three criteria must apply:

1. The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product attribute).

2. The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).

3. The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same test applies for metatags.