How should I protect my Intellectual Property ?

I am serious about my work and I want to make a developer name for myself and buy a domain for my site The site will contain my future projects.

How should I protect my Intellectual Property (my developer/site name, game characters and other assets)

well i guess it depends from country to country.

here in germany you can of course make a real company from your business, saving your logo etc....

But never forget, everything you make is your property. No one has the right, to take it away just because you don´t have a sheet or something that proves that.

In reality it will be really really hard to save it completely. There are countries on this world, which give a fu** on something like internet rights and if people who are located there steal your stuff, you can´t really do anything against it. It won´t be easy to attack someone from Cayman island with a lawyer you know

The only thing you can do is brand yourself. Make your name so trustworthy and visible as possible, so that people recognize that you are the dude with the skills, who did all the great stuff.

Look on the store, see the countless clones of popular games..

You cannot protect it, all they need to do is rip your art, put in a different shade or stroke of colour and you can't do squat. It's that blatant. Gameplay wise, theres no chance in hell to protect that awesome game idea you come up with.

If you REALLY want to protect it, its time to folk out a lot $$$ for the lawyer squad... and then only would they have a chance in some countries.

Your developer/site name I presume would be your business's name? If so, then register it as a trademark brand, which will give you (very) limited protection. Each IP address is also unique, but the only realistic protection against 'near names' is owning all of the IP near names yourself. That is, unless you have millions to spend on lawyers.

Most of your game elements will not be able to be IP protected unless you can product something both stunningly unique, and instantly recognisable in the wider marketplace; plus have protections already in place before 100 spoofs are made.

For you to ask this question, you don't understand the limitations of copyright, or of trademarks.

Here's a little thing I wrote several days ago here. The second last paragraph has relevant info on some limitations.

Having a service like legal zoom plus trademarking or copyrighting your creations is a good step as well. As a legal zoom customer on their premier plan I get a free copyright each month. Pretty nice!

Having a service like legal zoom plus trademarking or copyrighting your creations is a good step as well. As a legal zoom customer on their premier plan I get a free copyright each month. Pretty nice!

If the term is actually 'copyright', you do realise this is a fictional service.

Aurora Australis great job on the meaningful contribution to this conversation! Bravo!

For those who aren't aware, there is a massive industry around cloning popular games.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/02/the-de ... ipped-off/

But you have to be part of the 1% who have popular games for that to matter.

But you have to be part of the 1% who have popular games for that to matter.

Most certainly. People won't bother cloning something that doesn't make $.

But its just for devs to know, all these attempts to copyright or trademark are pointless. Look at Candy Saga and all the recent clones.

Not to mention that the King's hit game is a clone on it's own.

Realistically.. You most likely don't have resources to do any meaningful protection and most likely just waste the time/money/effort on even trying to do so.

Thank you all for your answers

Beaverlicious

Aurora Australis

BluePhaze

I know that I can't patent a gameplay type (that would be as retarded as trying to patent the words "Candy" and "King"). I want to know how to protect my developer/site name ...

Let's say I use the name RedFlag. I wouldn't mind if someone creates BlueFlag or CrimsonFlag , but I would mind if someone would use the name RedFlag2 or TheRedFlag or REDFlag.

Is there a way to do that or is better not to complicate

Does a Trademark help (and justifies the money) ?

A Trademark is never wrong. If you want to make Profit from your games, you have to Pay taxes as every Company does. Here you can be punished real hard for Acting and earning money like a Company, without paying the taxes.

Also saving the Domain and choosing a rare Name will help. If you search for Beaverlicious, you find me and nearly just me. If you choose redflag for example, youll be on page 10000;-)

A Trademark only works if you can establish the brand-name as yours. You probably won't be able to do this with a name like Redflag (in fact I guarantee you can't).

Polo shirts is an excellent case study on the limitations of trademarks.

Beaverlicious would be a fantastic trademark name, if beaver went down that route.

You have to have a name that is unique in your category (video games) to get a trademark, luckily "BluePhaze Creations" was relatively easy to get. Adding a second word to the trademark name makes it much easier to not be too close to other names. If you want to protect your name that is how you do it. There are over 40 categories of trademark, so you need to make sure you choose the correct one as well.