Question about Copyrights

Let me begin by saying that I am not a lawyer.

Afaik, in the U.S., everything you create, published or not, sold or not, is copyrighted automatically. Because they keep extending the lengths of copyrights, something created now will probably never enter the public domain again.

Practical caveats:

1) To actively defend your copyright, you should have evidence of the date of creation, like mailing a copy of the material to yourself.

2) What a copyright covers is limited. Copyrights are not extended to ideas; they are extended to representations (the words or symbols chosen to represent the ideas). A verbatim copy of copyrighted material- or a version that keeps significant, distinctive phrases intact- can be successfully attacked in the courts. Something that represents the ideas underlying copyrighted material, while using its own distinctive phrasing, cannot.

3) To protect your ideas themselves, independent of representation, get a patent or a trademark. These each have their own issues.

Patents: You have to actively go about patenting your work, as opposed to the passive copyright process. It's harder to do; you need to show that what you're doing hasn't been done before. There are also fees involved. Your patent lives for a finite amount of time- and the legislature is not continuously extending this amount of time, either.

Trademarks: This could theoretically protect the ideas in your game, in extreme circumstances. Trademarks are essentially legal protection for brand identity. If there is an aspect of your company's image that is very well known and firmly associated with only your company, then other companies aren't allowed to show or sell even non-identical variants on this aspect of your image. For example, the IBM logo is so well known that you couldn't call your company GBM and have a logo in the same style. The courts could say that you are confusing the customer and taking advantage of public goodwill towards IBM. Likewise, it's conceivable that a game could be so well-known and so associated with a particular company that slight variations on the game could be considered violations of trademark.

It has lots of info on copyright for laymen and comes straight from the government's copyright office.

The info advises that, while not necessary, it may be a good idea to mark your items with a copyright on the bottom in the following format: copyright mark (c in a circle - can't make the symbol here) followed by the year and the name of the owner. If nothing else, it may prove to be a deterrent to someone.

Also, I checked that to register your copyright (which gives you legal recourse to sue or enjoin someone from using your work) is extremely simple and costs $30. If it's something REALLY important to your game, maybe it's worth the $30???

My 2 cents,
Lisa

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