How the rights of the DotA map could be transferred to Valve? Dota (Defense of the Ancients), was a Warcraft 3 custom map that got the rights transferred to Valve in 2010 when two of their developers (Eul and IceFrog) were hired by Valve. However, Warcraft 3's terms of use forbid commercial use of custom maps created for that game. Was this considered a commercial use or a breach of contract somehow?
An additional important fact is that the EULA at the time did not assign Blizzard the rights to custom maps.1 And since 2010, Blizzard and Valve have jointly registered DotA-related copyright. See e.g. U.S. Copyright Registration Nos. TX0008153084 and TX0008149056. The theory of ownership is as follows. Because the EULA did not assign Blizzard the copyright in the customization, the modders gained copyright in those, despite the restriction that they not be used commercially. It was then free to them to transfer those rights to Valve. A court has considered in passing whether this assignment to Valve was valid. See Blizzard Entm't, Inc. v. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., No. 3:15-cv-04084-CRB (N.D. Cal. May. 16, 2017). The judge recognized that the EULA explicitly prevented Eul and Icefrog (the modders who assigned their rights to valve) from using their creations for commercial purposes. However, because uCool &quot;twice failed to argue that the ban prevented Eul and Icefrog from validly assigning their rights to Valve,&quot; the judge understood uCool to have waived that argument. Thus, the status of the copyrights is still in flux. However, commentators speculate that Blizzard and Valve have an agreement/protocol for dealing with these copyright issues. It would take a third-party to argue that copyright in one or more of the DotA variants is in the public domain or actually owned by some other creator and force a court to assess the copyright and validity of the assignment.2 1. Today, the language has been updated to &quot;assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games.&quot; 2. For one person's theory of how this could be the case, see David Nathaniel Tan, &quot;Owning the World's Biggest eSport: Intellectual Property and DotA&quot; (2018) 31:2 Harv. J.L. &amp; Tech 965 at 984 (analogizing to Sherlock Holmes). I am not suggesting that a third party with no ownership interest in the copyrights would have standing to enforce Blizzard's former ToS, ELUA, or other agreements, or its copyrights. I am proposing that the third party might raise these as an arguments in defence of their own use (as uCool did).
It’s personal data ... but why do you think you can change it for free? It’s clearly personal data because it can be demonstrably linked to you, both within and outside Blizzard’s database. Presumably, you consented Blizzard having it or they have some other legitimate basis for having it. So far, this is all GDPR compliant. You have a right to be forgotten, so you can ask Blizzard to delete your account. You have a right to confirm the information is correct. And that’s it. They can charge you a fee to change your user name just like your government can charge you a fee to change your real name.
Expression vs Idea As I understand it, copyright applies to creative expression and not for examples rules of games. That is not correct as stated. Game rule, or more exactly the fixed expression of a set of game rule (what one finds in the package of a commercial game, or in a book such as Hoyle's Rules of Games, can be and usually are protected by copyright. What is not protected is the ideas expressed in a set of rules. These are sometimes called &quot;game mechanics&quot;. For example it is a rule of bridge that 13 cards are dealt to each of 4 players. That is a fact, and so is not protected by copyright. But the exact wording of the official Laws of Duplicate Bridge is protected. &quot;creativity&quot; vs &quot;originality&quot; Many things that might not be considered very creative are protected. US Copyright law calls not for creativity, but for an original work. The concepts of &quot;creativity&quot; and &quot;originality&quot; have a significant overlap, but are not at all the same. For example, a person might watch a baseball game and write down play-by-play account of it. That might not be very creative, but it would still be protected by copyright. But the event of the game are facts, and not protected. Someone else might describe the same game in different words, covering the same facts, and that would not be copyright infringement. Another example. A person writes a scientific paper describing in detail a series of chemical experiments and the results obtained. That is not very creative (although the design of the experiments might be). It would, however, be protected by copyright. But the facts and ideas would not be protected. Another person could desacribe the same experiments in different words, and that would not be an infringement of copyright. Merger Doctrine In extreme cases, such as a basic recipe, there is no expression temperate from the facts. In such a case the &quot;merger doctrine&quot; applies, and there is no copyright protection at all. Standards Standards, such as ISO standards, are normally protected by copyright. But the ideas expressed in them are not. And since standards are highly factual, the protection afforded to them is particularly narrow. But when one is testing compliance with a standard, the exact words of the standard may be important. A compliance officer is not likely to accept a paraphrase as a valid substitute. Standards in Laws The actual text of laws (and regulations), however (Federal, state, or local) is never protected by copyright. All are in the public domain. So when a law incorporated and reprints a standard, as is often done with fire and building codes, anyone may freely reproduce the codes as set down as part of law, even through the code has been copyrighted and indeed registered, as long as the source is the text of an enacted law or regulation.
may require that you obtain license rights from third-party owners or licensors of content that you include in your text inputs (Emphasis mine). Based solely on the excerpt above, yes, you have the copyright on the audio files if you created the source material, as you are the creator, using Amazon Polly as/to generate a "tangible medium". One of the central rights granted by copyright is to control translation into a different medium (in this case, from text into audio), as is the right to control distribution, which is what this excerpt is talking about. "Third party" in this case means neither you nor Amazon. Basically, Amazon is informing you that using their software on someone else's copyrighted material does not grant you copyright on the audio recording.
Recall the basic principle of copyright law, as detailed in 17 USC 106: The copyright holder has the exclusive right to make copies; prepare derivative works; or distribute copies by sale, rental, lease, or lending. Other people can legally do these things only if they are given permission by the copyright holder, typically via a license. (Remember, the literal meaning of the word license is permission.) Often, the copyright holder will require a prospective licensee to accept various terms and conditions before the license will be granted. If there is &quot;no EULA&quot;, or if there is one but the purchaser has not agreed to its terms, then the purchaser has not been granted any such license, hence does not have permission to do any of the things listed above. If they do so anyway, it is illegal copyright infringement and they will be liable for damages. To use a firewall analogy, copyright law is &quot;default deny&quot;. So let's take your questions one by one: Do they own the software? US law has no concept of literally owning software. The closest thing is owning the copyright, which the purchaser certainly does not. It still belongs to the vendor that wrote the software (or whoever they may have later transferred it to). Can they legally alter the code of the program they purchased? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. The copyright holder has not granted them a license to do that. (There are some exceptions for purposes such as reverse engineering and interoperability, see 17 USC 1201(f)). Can they legally redistribute it No; again, that is the exclusive right of the copyright holder, and the purchaser has not received their permission. or transfer ownership? Maybe, if the first sale doctrine applies. Its application to software is complicated. The user has a better case for being able to sell the software if it exists as some tangible object which is transferred (physical media, pre-installed on hardware, etc). Can they legally modify the code of the program for others who have also purchased the same package? No, that would be preparing a derivative work. Can they take that software and install it on a secondary machine? No, that would be making a copy.
This is going to depend on several things. First of all, do you have a lawful, licensed copy of the SDK? My understanding is that Nintendo only licensed the SDK to selected game companies. If what you have is an unauthorized copy, you do not have the legal right even to use it. If what you have is properly licensed, then you do. Or is what you have an unofficial SDK created by someone other than Nintendo? Secondly, what does the license agreement that comes with the SDK provide? Does it require developers to register with Nintendo? If it does, you will need to comply. Nintendo cannot prevent others from writing programs designed to run on their hardware. But they can control who uses their development software, if they choose to. You cannot reproduce in your game any of Nintendo's copyrighted software (or anyone else's) without permission. That applies even more strongly if you intend to sell the software. But you can use any development software for which you have a valid license in whatever ways its license permits. I would expect this includes creating games. It would include selling games that you create that do not use any of Nintendo's code, unless there is a specific provision forbidding that in the license agreement.
It's a contract violation if you're under the EULA. It may be a contract of adhesion, but such "clickwrap" contracts been found to be acceptable and enforceable in software EULAs out of necessity. However, there may be some limits. If you're not under the EULA, as you argue, then you lack a license to use the software at all and it's an outright copyright violation and/or a theft or misappropriation of the software. Whether or not you can be sued depends in part on what you do with it — if you don't release the material or otherwise cause damages then there's not much to sue for... Added for clarification: to answer the framing question, supposing neither contract or copyright applied, one could be sued in tort or in equity (i.e. for unjust enrichment).
copyright will cover the names and graphics of games The names of games are not protected by copyright, nor by patent. The names could be protected by trademark. Note that trademarks are specific to a country: what is trademarked in one country may well not be in another. Almost all countries have a way to search their trademark registries, often online. However in some countries, including the US, use of a name in commerce will confer some protection even without registration. What will be considered a &quot;mechanic&quot;? for example MTG have specific mana system, if someone will be creating a game with same idea but will refer to it with other names such as &quot;Ember&quot; instead of &quot;Fire&quot; will it violate the patent? Game mechanics are not protected by copyright. This includes all the procedures and rules of the game. The text used to express those rules may be protected, but often it is not if it is the most obvious way to describe the mechanics. For example, in chess there are different pieces with different moves. That could not be protected by copyright, even if chess were a new game. In bridge the winner of each trick leads to the next. That could not be protected by copyright either, even if bridge were a new game (and contact bridge is just new enough that it could in theory be under copyright still). How do i know if certain patents are applied and when they expire? Most games are not protected by patent, but some are. Patents, like trademarks, are specific to a country. Each country has a way to search its list of active patents. Note that patents have a strict tiem limit, and they normally cannot be extended or renewed. I believe that the limit of a patent is currently 20 years in most countries. (It used to be 17 years in the US.) If a game is patented in Country X and someone is printing the same game but with different art and names in country Y, will the one who print in country Y could be exposed to a lawsuit? Unless the game is also patented in country Y, there will be no grounds for an infringement lawsuit inn Y. But importing the game into X may be patent infringement, and could expose the importer to a suit.