Going Public with a game

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

Ideas are cheap and a dime a dozen, the execution to bring them to fruition is the hard part. The odds of you having your game concept legitimately stolen are infinitesimal when viewed amongst the pool of possible game ideas out there. even the worst liars and cheats in the world will already have their own game ideas they want to pursue, they've no need to steal yours.

copyrighting the rules (well, they're actually copyrighted as soon as you write them, but that's not the point) offers essentially no protection- copyright only protects them as written (as in, someone can reword it and you have no protection). copyrights are more useful for game artwork than rules.

patent "protects" the mechanics of the game. if you are planning on submitting to publishers, they would pay for the patent themselves IF they think it's worthwhile. if you are planning on self publishing, you need to calculate the costs to patent amortized across your intended production run. on top of that, you need to be willing to protect the patent (meaning, pay the legal fees to do so). the government does not monitor or automatically protect things for you, you must actively pursue that yourself. moreover, even if granted a patent, a very large percentage of patents that wind up in court get thrown out based on "prior use" anyway. UNLESS you are planning on publishing yourself AND your production run is high enough that you intend to get the game into Toys R Us and Wal-Mart, I would not recommend wasting your time or money on a patent. Since you're asking us and not your CFO or board of consultants, I'd wager that's not the case ;)

I put trademark into a similar boat- unless you think the game is going to be the flagship of your new giant mass-market company, it's probably not worth your time. I've yet to see a game whose name is actually integral to the design.

If you want to submit to publishers, and you've got a prototype and rules that have been thoroughly playtested, blind playtested, and tuned, then you're ready to start doing so.

If you're going to self-publish, there are small POD companies (blue panther, guild of blades, thegamecrafter.com) that can help you for small print runs, depending on your needs. For larger print runs or more complex components (like molded plastic parts) you can talk to a turnkey solution (like imagigrafx or ludofact) or start scoping out companies in china.

I also very much agree with what was said above. You're wasting your time if you're thinking about protecting your unique/great game - esp if you want to even may some money at all when you're done. We release games in print and plan and then into print and no one in the industry has any real interest in stealing your ideas or even your prototype. There are just too many other things to go after.

If they do steal that little cool idea (say, deck building concept) - well you couldn't have protected yourself to begin with anyway. You can't protect that. Even if your lawyer says you can, to protect it or chase someone down would cost you so much money...

In fact, most publishers will NOT look at your game at all if you're being overly protective or expect them to sign some sort of NDA. Usually it's the reverse, you sign something to protect the publisher from your frivilous lawsuit.

James
http://www.MinionGames.com