Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Creating the Dice Battle Puzzle Game
There seems to be a lot of confusion among indie game developers about copyright, trademark,
and patent issues regarding games. While we are not lawyers, there are some common sense
ideas around these topics that every game developer should know, and a golden rule to
remember that trumps all of them.
Let's say you want to make a game that involves five dice that are rolled three times to make
poker hands. We'll call it Poker Dice. Sound familiar? You might know that games like this exist,
but do you know if you have the legal right to make one? By doing a little research, you would find
there is a classic game named Yacht that is played with five dice. Players roll the dice a
successive (but limited number) times to make poker-like hands and score points. This game has
been played for hundreds of years under all sorts of names but was popularized by the
commercial versions Kizmet and Yahtzee. In light of this, let's explore the prospect of making a
game like Poker Dice, from the perspective of copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
Getting started with intellectual property law
To find out if we can make Poker Dice, we'd first look to see what is covered under U.S.
copyright law.
Considering copyright
Copyright
is a way for authors to protect the stuff they have created. This “stuff” is usually
referred to as
intellectual works
. Here is how the United States Copyright Office defines
copyright at
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf
:
“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code)
to the authors of 'original works of authorship,' including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and
certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished
works. . . . It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the
owner of copyright.”
