Law in the Games Industry

Law in the Games Industry

 Video games are protected by copyright and trademark laws, the copyright is the protection of artist and literary expression not an idea. Copyright protects from the written word to the audio recording, to the motion picture to the software. Game trademarks are different to copyrights as a trademark protects the slogan, design and brand name. A lot of designers do not realize the overlapping protection of these two different types of ownership, for example a game title will never be copyrightable but it can be a trademark, the original audio, music, for a game is both a trademark and copyrightable, game characters can also be both copyright and a trademark.

So who owns the copyright? The creator of the game owns the copyright. Unless when an individual creates a game and does so as part of their employment, then the employer owns the copyright, this is known as work made for hire. Copyright and the trademark law also protects the games characters for example if your designing a game that has a blue hedgehog and looks like Sonic the Hedgehog you could be in violation of Sega copyright. The copyrights are there to prevent another person from copying or exploiting the creators work. Infringement of copyright can be a criminal offence, for example when making unauthorized copies of games and selling them is infringement for example if I burned a copy of Call of Duty on to a few discs and sold them on, I would be infringing on Activations copyright, this can involve the police or trading standards departments. But if I was making a backup copy of the same game and keeping it for myself this would not be an infringement. However, many of the copyright industries that are concerned about this type of crime have formed organizations representing their interests that are actively involved in enforcement work.

Piracy is also an issue in the Gaming Industry. Piracy causes many problems for publishers, especially indie companies, as the developers are not getting the money they would get if the pirate would otherwise download it. Many people make out piracy to be okay, by saying that they only torrent the game so they can try it out, see if it’s worth their money, and then buy it later, although this may not be the case they are often just trying to justify their actions. However sometimes piracy is unavoidable for example if I wanted to play a game that was no longer on sale and otherwise purchasable the only option I would have to get the game would be to download it off the internet, this poses the argument about whether it is alright to torrent the game or not as the developer is not getting any profit from the IP anymore whereas it also poses the problem that the downloader has broken the law by not paying for the game.

Bibliography -

lawofthegame.blogspot.co.uk

newmediarights.org

ipo.gov.uk

http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Copyright.svg&page=1

http://nexusdesigninc.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/trademark-it.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/8164342/Pirate-Bay-co-founders-lose-appeal.html