A Game about Slenderman - Copyright question

One of the hosts of the Building the Game podcast recently had the same issue: they had created a Slenderman game, but were concerned about copyright and "stealing" someone else's property.

http://www.buildingthegamepodcast.com/

Sorry, I don't remember. I listened to it earlier this summer, but from what I can see, it's not mentioned in their show notes.

Let me see what I can find out.

-Ed

I Doubt there would be any issues with slenderman copyright wise. I'm fairly sure that it's been widely used enough that no one is protecting the rights to the character. I'm not sure... but that's my belief.

The one thing I'd be highly careful about is using any elements you see in the popular games or shows.

While Slenderman itself might not be protected, things in the various media MIGHT be. So, be careful not to use story from games or mechanics from them. Don't collect pages or anything like that.

Even if the original property is open for use... any changes that people made are protected.

If you made a slender man game, there would be two types of copyright holders that might come after you, the creator of the character and the the creator of any of the various images of him.

It appears that the creator of slenderman is known, and that he's willing to freely give permission for others to use his idea. If you were going to shop your game to publishers, you'd want to get his permission in writing, preferably in a license agreement drafted by a lawyer.

Because so many people have made their own images with slenderman, it's possible that any one of them might come after you for copyright infringement because images in your game look too much like their's. Unless your artist draws a near-exact duplicate of an existing picture, this would be a hard case for the plaintiff to win because there is so much other slenderman content out there.

A defense to a copyright claim is "independent creation." This means that if I wrote a story that is similar to another published book and I can prove that I never read or heard anything about that other book, I have not violated copyright law. Thus, one way to protect yourself from copyright liability is to hire an artist that has no knowledge of what slenderman is, amass some reference images that either have an appropriate Creative Commons license or you have permission to use and provide these to your artist. Be sure to document everything thoroughly.

Note also that characters like this are often protected by trademark as well as copyright, however, with Trademarks. In the US, "The Slender Man" is a registered trademark of DC visionaries, which is apparently unrelated to DC comics. Here, having a registered TM does not necessarily mean that the TM is valid.

Finally, note that a number of law schools in the US have clinics that provide free or low-cost legal assistance to small businesses and creators, some of these focus on intellectual property law. One that comes to mind is at the California Western School of Law, and there are also others. Looking into getting help from one of these would be a good idea if you seriously intend to market your game with the Slenderman theme. There is no substitute for legal advice from a licensed attorney.