Is use of names and insignias of disbanded British military units from WW2 allowed in a commercial video game? I wish to make a commercial PC video game based on the British commando units from 1940s that have been disbanded in 1946. The unit is &quot;No.3 commando&quot;. Is the use of names like no.3 and commando permitted in the name and other text in a video game? Same goes for insignia. In case it requires special permission, which institution should I contact to seek the said permission, since I'm not a UK citizen? I have heard about crown copyright that expires after 50 years but haven't been able to find enough information pertaining to commercial uses. Just for reference, an existing game that uses such names and markings is &quot;commandos behind enemy lines.&quot;
The names of such units are not protected by copyright, and never were. However their insignia would have been under Crown copyright See also Ministry of Defence Crown Copyright Licensing Information. Crown Copyright expires after 50 years for all published works, but lasts for 125 years after creation for unpublished works. Works obtained through archives, such as the Imperial War Museum, are often considered unpublished, unless they were previously published in some form. Use of an insignia on a uniform may not constitute publication. Some UK military insignia, including most current insignia, is also protected by trademark. But if the insignia are not used to advertise a product, nor to identify a product, nor in such a way as to imply sponsorship, endorsement or approval, trademark protection would not apply. In any case it is not at all clear that WWII-era insignia of now-defunct units are currently protected by trademark in the UK. If an insignia is still under copyright or trademark, the above linked licensing information describes how to apply for a license. Free licenses are available in some cases for use in books, but not, apparently, for &quot;commercial products&quot;.
Depending on your jurisdiction, such lists may be protected, but not by copyright. For example, in Germany there was a court decision that scanning all the country’s phone books and selling them on CD constituted “unfair competition” and was illegal, while hiring 1000 typists who would manually type in all this information would not be. Databases are protected in many jurisdictions, and a list of the 1000 most commonly used English words could reasonably be called a database.
Intellectual property law varies considerably by jurisdiction, and doesn't just involve copyright, but also trademarks, and patents. The first problem you are going to run into is that "Risko!" is probably protected as a commercial trademark rather than copyright. In the US at least, making minor changes to a trademark generally doesn't get you off the hook for unlicensed use. The owner of the "Risko!" trademark could bring suit against you for trademark infringement and it would be up to a judge or possibly a jury to decide whether "Risko" is different enough from "Risko!" that confusion would be unlikely. If they won the suit they could collect damages and their legal costs. There was a protracted and important trademark lawsuit in the US over the names "Monopoly" and "Anti-Monopoly" for board games. An economist, Ralph Anspach, had introduced a game he called "Anti-monopoly". He was sued by the Parker Brothers company for infringing on their trademark for "Monopoly". After 10 years the US Supreme Court ruled in Anspach's favor, finding that "Monopoly" had become a generic term for a type of board game and was no longer a valid trademark. You can't necessarily count on being "small potatoes" so that they'll simply ignore your possible infringement. In US law, failure to enforce their trademark rights can lead to the loss of trademark rights and remedies, so companies are less likely to let minor infringements slide. The situation in Italy may be different. Your artwork and graphical components are another potential problem. Those probably are covered by copyright. Again, the holder of the copyright for the "Risko!" artwork could sue you for violating their copyright on the artwork. A judge or jury would then evaluate whether your artwork was "derivative" of the "Risko!" artwork. If the court finds that your artwork is derivative, you might have to pay damages and legal costs. There are actually a ton of Risk inspired games already available online, but they seem to stay away from names that sounds anything like "Risk" and anything that looks like the Risk artwork.
Legally, yes, if you get a license from Blizzard (unlikely, and if so, they'll probably want either money or a portion of your profits). Otherwise, not legally. This is exactly the situation that IP law (e.g. copyright and trademark) was created to address. Blizzard created the game and so they have rights to control and benefit from derivatives there of. There are some exceptions, but prints, buttons, and keychains are not likely to meet the requirements for those.
Reviewing https://stackexchange.com/legal/trademark-guidance shows the following: The logos associated with Stack Exchange Inc. and any Stack Exchange site are a trademark. The purpose of trademark law is to prevent consumers from being misled as to the origin of a product. So if you were making a product, and you used a Stack Exchange name or logo in your product (or in its advertising) in such a way that would mislead someone into thinking that your product was owned by, operated by, endorsed by, or in any way part of Stack Exchange Inc., you would be violating the trademark and this would not be legal. Our logo images and site names are copyrighted. Any content on the Stack Exchange Network not contributed by users is copyrighted. Copyright is different than trademark. Ordinarily you couldn't copy it. But if you were writing a news story or blog post about a Stack Exchange site, reproducing the logo image would almost certainly be considered &quot;fair use&quot; and allowed under trademark law because you were not using it &quot;in trade.&quot; So the answer to your question is yes, you would need to seek the permission of the trademark holder.
A short phrase such as the band's name, or a song title is not protected by copyright, either in the US or the UK. The shirt as a whole is not protected by copyright, because you created the combination of image and words. The band's name or song title could have been protected by trademark law, but this almost surely doe snot apply, because: A. You are not selling anything, so trademark protection would not apply. B. The phrases are not now being used in trade, because the band is no longer selling music. Thus any trademark protection should have lapsed. The image of the singer may be protected under his "personality rights" but this usually only protects use for commercial purposes, which a shirt for your own personal use isn't. Even if there were an active trademark, the owner is not likely to find out and order you to stop for one short for personal use. In short, the actions described should be legally safe, but selling such a shirt to multiple other people would be a different matter.
I've seen prohibito used in a few places, but never by any source that I'd use as a model for my writing. As I understand it, the Latin names for the other writs were adopted in medieval times, when Latin was much more heavily used in the English courts, while the writ of prohibition developed centuries later. In that case, I think it would have been natural to simply give it a standard English name.
Yes, but... Trademarks generally have a particular class of goods or services they apply to. For a common word such as &quot;sky&quot;, a trademark will only be granted for a very narrow set; there's no chance of getting an &quot;all purposes&quot; trademark like you could for a made-up word. For example, VuongGiaNghi Nguyen holds a trademark to &quot;Sky&quot; in the United States when describing &quot;Eyelash Glue, Eyelash Extension Glue, False eyelashes, False eyelash perm kit, Lash Extensions&quot;, while Strange Loop, LLC, holds a trademark to it when describing &quot;Downloadable software featuring conversational agents to facilitate communication between humans and machines in an electronic messaging platform for use in the healthcare and medical fields&quot;. I'm guessing that British Sky Broadcasting's trademark has a &quot;goods and services&quot; that overlaps or is very similar to Microsoft's use of &quot;sky&quot;.