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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperBusinessLegal advice offered
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sillytuna
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« on: July 09, 2008, 02:20:10 PM »

(also posted to TCE)

So my nice lawyer has said he'll let me do a bit of QnA with him for indies since he works with a few of us.

So, if any indie devs or wannabe indie devs have legal or IP related questions, if you post them here I shall try and get answers for you. They'll be edited for the blog but I'll put anything relevant directly here too.

And, obviously, I'll recommend my (UK) lawyer!

Free legal advice, don't knock it Wink
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Eclipse
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« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2008, 03:03:56 PM »

I've one, are CC (Creative Commons)licenses a good manner to protect an IP? Or is still better to have a "proper" (C)?

Thaaaank you  Grin
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<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
Dugan
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« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2008, 02:00:10 PM »

re. game titles, how easy is it to protect the name of your game (or check that someone might already own it)?

For example, a DS game I once worked on had no title, so the publisher had to find a name for it. Is there a database (like domain names) where you can check who owns what, and register your own titles?

thanks in advance.
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Ciardhubh
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« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2008, 02:20:03 PM »

Is there a database (like domain names) where you can check who owns what, and register your own titles?

You could start by checking trademarks with your local (or wherever you want to sell your product) trademark register. E.g.:
EU: http://oami.europa.eu/en/database/ctm-online.htm
USA: http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm

As far as I know, every country has its own register, though there are some efforts via the WIPO to harmonise trademarks internationally.
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qubodup
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« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2008, 01:52:59 AM »

I've one, are CC (Creative Commons)licenses a good manner to protect an IP? Or is still better to have a "proper" (C)?
It sure would be interesting to hear the Lawyers opinion on that, but I think you should be more specific. Intellectual property is a wide field. What do you want to protect? A name? (trademark) An (eg. game mechanics) idea? (patents) Source code, binaries and media? (copyright)

Also, what do you want to protect from? From re-distribution? From commercial usage? From re-implementation? From people getting inspiration from your game? (^^) From the art being used in other games? From the code being used to create a commercial game? I could go on and on Smiley

So I'll just repeat that this is truly interesting for me and I'm not smartarsing because I'm a smartarse, but because I want an answer and it will require a clear question. Wink
« Last Edit: August 28, 2008, 01:59:32 AM by qubodup » Logged
Eclipse
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« Reply #5 on: August 29, 2008, 02:17:57 AM »

from all the stuff generally a videogame is protected from Smiley
Not for game mechanics or source code, i know those needs patents, so more something for binaries and media.

Re-distribution and commercial usage are covered by the EULA, so something more about protecting your "brand" if someone do a game clearly ripping your medias or someone decide do to a plushie or another gadget clearly derived by a your design (like the unofficial Fez plushie i saw around).

So, do Creative Commons act like a proper Copyright over media and binaries?
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qubodup
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« Reply #6 on: September 01, 2008, 05:37:43 AM »

from all the stuff generally a videogame is protected from Smiley
So also from re-distributing?
Not for game mechanics or source code, i know those needs patents
You don't patent source code.

Re-distribution and commercial usage are covered by the EULA, so something more about protecting your "brand" if someone do a game clearly ripping your medias or someone decide do to a plushie or another gadget clearly derived by a your design (like the unofficial Fez plushie i saw around).
If you want to prevent someone from making graphics which look like yours, then I think you need to trademark your graphics. By default nobody is allowed to use the graphics you make, but nobody is disallowed to re-make your graphics.

So, do Creative Commons act like a proper Copyright over media and binaries?
Creative Commons is an organization.

Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses.

Creative commons licenses are made for allowing free distribution of different sorts of stuff.

BTW: There is no "The Creative Commons license".

You own copyright over everything you create.

You can put your stuff on-line and if you don't say "you are allowed to copy it and use the media to create games with it" nobody can legally create games using your media.

Nobody is allowed to re-use or re-distribute your stuff without authorization. Creative Commons licenses are possible licenses for allowing re-using and/or re-distribution of your stuff.

What do you want to acchieve? That people are allowed to re-distribute your games, that they are not allowed to re-distribute your game for profit and that people are not allowed to change the graphics in the game?

If you want to disallow everybody to use the graphics which you made, then there is no Creative Commons license which suits your needs.

If you want to disallow commercial usage of your game and it's media, but want to allow non-commercial distribution of your game and non-commercial use of the media, you can use the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (if you want to allow people to change your graphics) or the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (if you don't want to allow people to change your graphics.)

Supposing you read the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license (or at least the summary) and like it, then I guess the question to the lawyer would be: "Is CC BY NC a good license?" or something like that.

I recommend releasing (freeware) games as free/open source software under copyleft licenses though, as they usually prevent commercial use and allow development of the game without the need for the original developers to participate.
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Thorst
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« Reply #7 on: September 01, 2008, 08:22:25 AM »

A related thread pointed out that Creative Commons is not recommended for software.  See http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F

So you might use a CC license for your graphics or text, but I don't see what that would get you that you don't already get from the EULA.
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Eclipse
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« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2008, 01:41:32 AM »

blah blah

commonly saying Creative Commons means "one of the cc license" not the organization of course, i was aware about all that stuff anyway


I recommend releasing (freeware) games as free/open source software under copyleft licenses though, as they usually prevent commercial use and allow development of the game without the need for the original developers to participate.

i recommend not, because freeware doesn't mean open source at all and the best way to protect your freeware game is not by law, that can act only after the things occur, but simply not giving the source code around.
DosBox is being used by ID Software in their "commander keen" collections on Steam, and ScummVM is used in lucasart stuff too. Without any agreement of any sorta... and it's something they were never able to do without having the source code, i bet they would ask and maybe offer something to the authors if so
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qubodup
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« Reply #9 on: September 05, 2008, 01:55:40 AM »

commonly saying Creative Commons means "one of the cc license" not the organization of course, i was aware about all that stuff anyway
Good to hear. But if ya did know the different licenses, why did you not specify one?

PS: Hm, but it seems you don't distinguish between "copyright" and "copyright license" - could that be?

i recommend not, because freeware doesn't mean open source at all and the best way to protect your freeware game is not by law, that can act only after the things occur, but simply not giving the source code around.
Oh well, that was my recommendation for preventing commercial use while still allowing others to use and extend it.

I'm still not sure what you want to protect from. If it's just "I don't want others to sell my game or use parts of it to create commercial games", ccbync seems the obvious choice. So you want to know from the lawyer whether or not ccbync is a good license to choose?

DosBox is being used by ID Software in their "commander keen" collections on Steam, and ScummVM is used in lucasart stuff too. Without any agreement of any sorta... and it's something they were never able to do without having the source code, i bet they would ask and maybe offer something to the authors if so
why do you use an emulator/vm as an example? A heapload of applications/libs is being used for commercial use. The authors are obviously okay with that. They probably wouldn't choose that license otherwise.
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Eclipse
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« Reply #10 on: September 05, 2008, 02:56:12 AM »

So you want to know from the lawyer whether or not ccbync is a good license to choose?

i was talking about all the CC licenses but yes specificately the one that interest me more (at the moment) is the ccbync

why do you use an emulator/vm as an example? A heapload of applications/libs is being used for commercial use. The authors are obviously okay with that. They probably wouldn't choose that license otherwise.

dosbox author didn't the software to let ID makes money out of it, without a "thanks to" or without giving the modified source code, it's GPL not LGPL.
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<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
qubodup
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« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2008, 04:24:09 AM »

i was talking about all the CC licenses but yes specificately the one that interest me more (at the moment) is the ccbync
I see. Well, I too am interested in whether or not a lawyer thinks that ccbync does what it promises Smiley

dosbox author didn't the software to let ID makes money out of it, without a "thanks to" or without giving the modified source code, it's GPL not LGPL.
Hm. Are you saying that id *might* not have said thanks and changed the source code without giving back the changes? Or are you saying that they actually did it?

It'd be unfair to suggest that id software or anybody else did neither donate, nor say thanks and perhaps even violate copyright law without knowing for sure.

If you want to point out that all these things are possible: yes, that's all true. I think that the pros (independance of the game from original developer, easier distribution) outweight the cons (possible copyright infringement).
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Movius
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« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2008, 02:09:03 AM »

dosbox author didn't the software to let ID makes money out of it, without a "thanks to" or without giving the modified source code, it's GPL not LGPL.
This is covered by the "Mere aggregation" clause in the GPL (which is fairly explicit if i recall). DOSBOX and Commander Keen being seperate programs means that one isn't affected by the other's license. At least as far as GPL is concerned.
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Thorst
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« Reply #13 on: September 06, 2008, 02:31:51 PM »

...ccbync seems the obvious choice...

From http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F:
Quote
Creative Commons licenses should not be used for software.

Games are software.

Also, check out MAME's license:
http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:About#Is_MAME_Open_Source.3F
It does not allow commercial use, but MAME still has an open source style development model.
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