Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
By searching TESS for the word “Yahtzee,” you will find the following information (and more):
Word mark
: YAHTZEE
Goods and services:
IC 028. US 022. G & S: POKER DICE GAMES. FIRST USE: 19560403.
First use in commerce
: 19560403
Registration date
: March 19, 1957
(LAST LISTED OWNER)
HASBRO, INC. CORPORATION BY MERGER WITH RHODE ISLAND 1027
NEWPORT AVENUE PAWTUCKET RHODE ISLAND 02862
Renewal
: 3RD RENEWAL 20070323
Live/Dead Indicator
: LIVE
From this information, you can see that not only is Yahtzee trademarked, but the category it is
trademarked under is “poker dice games,” and the record indicates that it is
live
—bingo. This
means that as a game developer, you cannot make a game named “Yahtzee” because that name
is trademarked and still in use. This is a very simple example, but it illustrates our point. If you
think you can get away with naming your game something that already exists, you may be in for
trouble. It should be noted that even if you
don't
find a trademark in the TESS database, one
might still exist. If you want to be sure that a trademark does not exist, or if you want to trademark
something of your own, you should consult an intellectual property attorney.
Besides the trademark though, we can still make a game with the “idea” of Yahtzee because, as
you saw in the “Getting started with copyright” section, a game idea cannot be copyrighted, only
the specific implementation of a game can. This means that, while you can't make a game named
Yahtzee that looks and plays exactly like the commercial game, you can make game named
Poker Dice that is essentially the same thing, as long as all the graphics, words, and so on are
your own. However, there still might be an instance when this would not be legal, and that is
when a patent is involved.
Adding patents to the mix
Patents
are used to protect inventions for the inventor. Specific algorithms and unique game
mechanics might fall under a patent. According to the United States Patent And Trademark
Office, a patent is “a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to
an inventor 'to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention
throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States' for a limited time in
exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted”
(
http://www.uspto.gov/main/glossary/#p
).
So, the question arises, have any game ideas, mechanics, and algorithms been patented in the
past? In short, the answer is “yes.” Many patents involve games. A quick search of the United
States Patent database (
http://patft.uspto.gov/
) will bring up hundreds of records with the
word “game” in them. It could be exhausting to look through all those patents to see if any of them
resemble your game. By limiting your search to something like “poker dice,” you get smaller list
that includes many interesting patent descriptions including these:
Patent 5,456,467
: Method of playing a poker dice game
Patent 6,605,001
: Dice game in which categories are filled and scores awarded
Patent 7,331,860
: Game of skill and chance and system and method for playing such
game
