Hot answers tagged copyright
25
No.
In most cases... also, I am not a lawyer, find one they help.
Arrangements of, and recordings of, specific performances of classical music are both copyrighted separately. This means that even if a piece in its original form is in the public domain, the piece itself is still someone's active intellectual property.
So, when can you use classical music?
...
20
Byte published a high-level summary of the "abandonware" situation in 2001, which answers many of these questions. However, it's dealing with the case where you simply want the company to re-release the software or release it into the public domain. If you intend to license it and resell it, you will definitely need a lawyer to draft up a contract to protect ...
18
Well, let's talk about intellectual property, since that's really where it seems like your focus is right now. Before I continue, though, I just want to briefly mention that you also want to make sure that you understand where you stand with other aspects of the law as well, things like taxes (Do you have to charge some kind of sales taxes? What sort of ...
14
First, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you follow my advice and get sued then it's your fault not mine.
That said, you've talked about "copyright issues". I'm going to break this down into two questions:
1) If I get sued for copyright infringement, will I win?
Probably! Game mechanics can't be copyrighted, so you're safe there. If "potion" ...
13
First, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you follow my advice and get sued and lose your house then it's your fault not mine.
Unfortunately, as simple as that question is, it really needs to be broken down into two questions.
1) If I get sued for copyright infringement, will I win?
Maybe! Assuming those pieces are in fact public domain now, ...
13
Do I have to say that I'm not a lawyer? I'm not a lawyer.
In some/most countries, you can use a pseudonym of your choosing called a Trade Name. You just can't use "Incorporated", "Limited" or any other legal label in the name though. This type of business is called a Sole Proprietorship, and I would highly recommend it because it's easy to create (you ...
12
You're asking about more than the name, if you re-made the actual game (rhyme unintended). In the US, copyright has been constantly extended, and is now the author's life + 75 years - so no, the game is still copyrighted.
And the name is covered by trademark, not copyright (which also would not have expired - I don't think it does expire). If your name is ...
11
This will depend entirely on the license applied to the art assets. The number of open source licenses is always growing, so attempting to provide a list here would be pointless.
You will need to research the specific license that's applied to the art. Some of these licenses will allow you to reuse the art. For example, in the link you provide, a majority ...
10
I am not a lawyer, the following is not legal advice. If you would like legal advice you should consult a real lawyer. My anecdotes regarding the law are biased entirely towards that of the United States.
No, you should not use copyrighted sprites (or any other asset) in your demo. It is a bad idea.
Copyright gives the author of a work (in this case, ...
10
Why bother?
It's pointless to clone a game widespread such as that one: doing so you automatically give away any chance of success for your game!
You risk getting sued to build something that will be worthless anyway? Why, lol, that's nonsense!
You'd better focus on actually creating something original instead.
10
It depends on the level of detail you go into and how you generate your data. From Will's post, deriving your layout from OSM does seem to be a way of doing this to an extent, however if you derive anything from any other source you'll need to carefully check their licences very carefully.
There may be certain buildings or objects in real cities or ...
9
I'll paraphrase my answer from Audio copyright questions (and I am Not a Lawyer :)
Note that this assumes you're in the US (or other Berne signatory countries), and in particular, Canada may be different, as was discussed.
It also assumes that when you say, "bought a song", you meant bought a copy from Amazon or somewhere - if you actually bought the ...
9
The video game rights to the My Little Pony franchise appear to currently be owned by Hasbro.
While Hasbro does not appear to have an internal game development studio, Hasbro does have strong relationships with both EA and Activision, with core-audience games ("Transformers") typically being developed by Activision-owned studios, and casual games ...
9
Licensing
You can try to monetize your game engine & framework from licensing. This most probably means that you will make your software proprietary and closed source to fight piracy (obfuscated AS3 code in your case, maybe you have some external tools that can be protected a bit more), but not necessarily.
There are mostly two types of license that ...
8
You can use OpenStreetMap.org - their license is clear and suitable:
You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our maps and data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors.
osm2xp is for example using this data for the X-Plane game:
8
Hire a lawyer. The earlier the better -- you should have done it already to draw up contracts concerning who retains what IP if people leave or disagree, et cetera.
See this article on the legal issues related to ad hoc, indie development teams (written by a real lawyer, which I am not, so my advice is not legal advice).
8
Copyright expiry depends where you live. The simple answer is that they are copyright, and you can get sued. (More likely you'll get a cease-and-desist shutting down development of your game and threatening legal action.)
If you really want a pokemon-style game, create your own unique game world and characters and use those.
8
You need a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
That said,
being free usually makes no difference at all
"game concepts" usually cannot be subject to copyright, but in many perverted jurisdictions apparently are subject to patents
regardless of being legal or not, remember you can be sued anyway: if you can't afford to defend yourself you'd better play ...
8
Neither being an indie developer, nor releasing game for free, doesn't grant you some additional rights implicitly. You can either need to have agreement with rights owner, or use music that is in public domain or other license (like CC license) that allows some sort of free usage.
Also as Markus correctly mentioned in comment, Public Domain is a tricky ...
7
The legal perspective:
No, you cannot legally redistribute someone else's copyrighted work.
This is international law. It is not debatable. It is not made okay by giving credit. It does not become okay by giving it away for free. By copying someone else's copyrighted work, you are violating their copyright -- literally, their exclusive right to make ...
7
tl;dr:
Tattoo the phrase CITE WHAT'S NOT YOURS on your arm, and you'll be happy forever.
Some details:
Wikipedia says (emphasis added):
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted
by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States
copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of
...
7
Not a lawyer, here's my personal interpretation.
I'd think that using the name of a company that doesn't exist could be considered fraud. The copyright holder should be you for now. This covers the contingency where you don't form that company, or you don't form it soon. A copyright is property that you can transfer to your company later if you wish.
6
Generally, and nearly universally around the world: game systems (pure mathematical formulas and algorithms) can't be copyrighted, and thus can be copied freely, even without being nice and asking. However, In some jurisdictions they can be protected - in parts or whole - by patents.
For everything else, ask a lawyer.
6
"If M, how ? It's easy for him to avoid any kind of punishment as "the
mod" is free and therefore there are no business entities and hence M
can simply leave no information about himself."
It doesn't matter whether it is non-commercial/free or not. Copyright always applies if something is being distributed. M only wouldn't be guilty if he wouldn't ...
6
The safe answer is to never use content you did not originally create. Any knowledge of using copyright protected content is obvious infringement. You can always try contacting the owner of the content and explain to them how you want to use something. They may give you permission to use it for free(for a student project or something) or may license it to ...
6
[Discalimer: I'm not a lawyer. I've just researched the topic a bit.]
In some countries, there is (what I would call) a grey area in copyright known as fair use.
I believe its considered a grey area because:
The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no ...
6
Engine without support is nothing.
You should sell license for your engine with support.
You should expect that you will help people to make game with your engine.
There are many open source, free, etc engines and code samples.
It is hard to select one.
You should build community around your engine.
It is not simple even if engine is free.
If people ...
6
Distributing copyrighted music without a license from the copyright owner is a violation of copyright, and is illegal in most parts of the world.
Yes, it's still a violation of copyright even if you distribute it for free.
Yes, it's still a violation of copyright even if you credit the artist.
Yes, it's still a violation of copyright even if you hold your ...
6
I'm the Flare creator (main developer and main artist). Drop me a message if you have specific questions.
All of Flare's art can be reused commercially. Some assets are CC0, some are CC-BY, some are CC-BY-SA. It's important to know the requirements of each asset you use and that you credit each artist.
Share-Alike assets can only be remixed with other ...
6
(Stock caveat: I Am Not A Lawyer and this should not be construed as specific legal advice.)
If all you're concerned about is that your work is copyrighted to you, then you're in luck - that happens automatically upon creation of the work, and no explicit copyright mark is needed.
On the other hand, if you're concerned about the prospect of people ...
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