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When to copyright
Inx
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Some of you may remember that I've been working with some friends to start up a traditional games company. We're about ready to move into the beta testing for our first product, but now I realize we might want to...you know, protect it.
The problem is that aside from this current, work-in-progress build of the rules, we only have a skeleton of the fluff of the game. From what I've been reading, copyright doesn't protect "systems or methods" of doing things. Would a game system not fall under copyright? If so, when should we copyright? Do we need more than a rough timeline of the setting?
I used to think I knew what I was talking about with copyrighting, but boy was I apparently wrong. Can someone give me advice on this one?
The problem is that aside from this current, work-in-progress build of the rules, we only have a skeleton of the fluff of the game. From what I've been reading, copyright doesn't protect "systems or methods" of doing things. Would a game system not fall under copyright? If so, when should we copyright? Do we need more than a rough timeline of the setting?
I used to think I knew what I was talking about with copyrighting, but boy was I apparently wrong. Can someone give me advice on this one?
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Also I should have specified we're in the United States.
Copyright itself only protects original works fixed in a tangible means of expression.
What that means is that you cannot copyright game mechanics, but the tangible expression of those mechanics, the game you are making, is automatic upon its creation.
Copyright protects the expression, not the idea behind it.
Specific game mechanics, if unique enough, can be patented, but not protected by copyright law.
As the creator, you have exclusive rights to copying, distribution, derivative works, public performance or display and (sometimes) attribution. This only changes if you have a legal agreement with another party selling, giving or exchanging those rights for something else.
To have protection, you must have evidence of protection - in other words, copies of your game.
You can file for registered trademark for specific portions of your game, such as the company name, game name, game logo, etc, but you already have copyright protection on your game. If you are concerned about people or other companies stealing it, you should document it in a way that proves you have this tangible expression of your game at this certain date, in case you need to prove it in a court of law.
Should we copyright the concept art?
Trademarking is a good call and we should do that.
But just to be perfectly clear: Copyrighting the rulebook basically just protects us from people printing off copies of that rule, but would not protect us from using our exact rules to produce a game of their own? Is there a way to prevent that?
Concept art is copyrighted already at the point of creation. You don't need to "copyright" anything. It is already done.
Same with the rule book. Someone could make a game with an identical rule set as your game, sure. Is it likely? Not really. If they did, you might have some legal recourse if you can prove it is causing lost revenue or is creating a sense of infusion in the marketplace about which product is yours, but that is what the trademark is for - to identify the source of goods.
For instance, this guy: http://www.gameattorney.com/
He runs a number of events and departments for the Igda - if you're an independent developer, you should consider joining them or another similar organization. They have lots of resources available for exactly these sorts of situations.
No. This is the digital equivalent of the "poor man's copyright," which is sending yourself your material to copyright in a sealed envelope and using the postmark as "proof." It's even covered by the Copyright Office's FAQ. Actual honest-to-goodness registration is cheap and fairly straightforward. If you were ever in court and there was a dispute as to date of copyright, and all you had were dated emails, I suppose that the court might consider that as evidence, but why take the chance?
As Rankenphile says, it's copyrighted as soon as it's in a fixed form of expression. If you want the additional benefits of registration, you should register those copyrights. From the above-linked FAQ:
"Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within 5 years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law."
Yes, that is correct. It also prevents people from creating derivative works of your rulebook. So, nobody can take the text of your rulebook for "Settlers of Lnxia," re-typeset it, and republish it as "Settlers of Foobaria." Under US Copyright Law, the abstract rules themselves are not protectable by copyright. As Rankenphile said, you could attempt to patent the rule set. That would be unorthodox, but possibly do-able. Compared to copyrights, patents are very hard to obtain (you can expect $10,000s of expenses and perhaps years of time waiting and working with an attorney to move the invention through the patent office). Even if you had a patent, enforcing it also tends to be difficult and expensive. A patent litigation attorney I worked for once told me that the average patent suit that makes it to court costs something like a few million dollars on each side. So, in order to make it worthwhile to do much more than have your lawyer send a nastygram to the other side, you'd need to make a case for millions of dollars in damages just to break even.
Also, just because your rules are original does not necessarily mean that they are patentable; they would also have to be novel. If your rules can be shown to be different from any previously published invention in what's considered an "obvious" way to someone of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., your average traditional game designer), then you would not be able to patent them.
You are very concerned about protecting your creation, but are you equally concerned about protecting the creations of others? As a fun and potentially terrifying thought-experiment: how do you know that your game is not currently in violation of somebody else's patent? Under patent law, it is not necessary for you to be aware of a patent to be infringing it. If you independently came up with rules or mechanisms that already happen to be patented, you are still potentially infringing. And, my guess is that you did not come up with your ruleset 100% independently - I am sure you have played lots of traditional games and that your rules and mechanisms are probably a creative and unique combination or modification of things you've seen work successfully. Do you know whether those things are patented? Just because you made a minor modification to some mechanism, or combined it with other mechanisms, does not necessarily mean you did not infringe the patent on that mechanism. However, before you go searching the patent database, know this: if you get sued for patent infringement (unlikely right now because you have no money and the damages would be minuscule), and it comes out that you knew about a potentially-infringed patent and ignored it, then you can get hit for treble (triple) damages. For this reason, many companies in patent-rich fields (software, electronics) caution their employees/engineers never to look in the patents database to avoid this liability.
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Right now, your biggest problem is not people copying your work. It's people never finding out about it at all. If you're going to invest time and money in something right now, it shouldn't be protecting yourself from a low-probability event (being ripped off), it should be avoiding a high-probability event (languishing in obscurity). Spend that time and money on making a better product and marketing the shit out of it.