Is it legal to publish a game that already exists but it was 100% developed by me I am a lover of classic games and I've developed some classical games such as: Connect 4 Monopoly Trivial Battleship My main question is what will happen if I publish any of these applications in the existing app stores such as Play Store or App Store for Android/iOS. Can I create my own games and publish them? Or I will encounter legal problems because these games have been around for years and are protected by the creators. Should I use an exclusive design or can I rely on the designs of the original games? Nowadays, I can see most of these games are published by different developers than the original creator of the game.
It depends on the game and what you copy. Games are an utter nightmare when it comes to IP law as so many parts of them cannot be copyrighted. Game rules for example cannot be copyrighted, nor can the concept itself. Some things can be copyrighted or trademarked. You cannot use the following: Names Written elements- while the rules themselves can't be copyrighted, rulebooks can Artwork and other visual elements Miniatures designed for the game Original characters Try to avoid these and the Hasbro lawyers should leave you alone.
It's Problematic The castle is both copyright and trade mark of Disney. As a trade mark, you are not permitted to use it in a way that indicates that yours is a Disney product or affiliated with Disney - you are probably OK here. As a copyright, Disney has the exclusive right to make derivative works which is what your mosaic is. So, you either need Disney's permission or the work needs to fall under the fair use exemption. As a single domestic work which substantially changes the original it probably does but the only way to know for sure is get sued and win. If you go ahead I would ask your client to indemnify you, however, this is only effective to the extent that your client has the financial resources to defend the lawsuit or pay the damages. However, there is an alternative. The Cinderella Castle was inspired by real architecture, all of which is public domain. If you copy one of these castles (e.g. Neuschwanstein Castle) you have no issues with Disney and only a true fanatic would notice the difference.
The images as displayed are quite similar, similar enough that one could violate the copyright of the other. But that is not enough to know if there was in fact a copyright infringement. There are several possibilities: Although using different names, the developers could in fact be the same company. One developer might have obtained permission to use the image from the other. Both images might be based on the same 3rd-party image which both are using with permission. Both images might be based on a public domain image. Copyright is only infringed if a protected work, or a derivative version of the work, is used without permission from the copyright holder. Without knowing who the rights-holder is, and if permission has been obtained, one cannot know if an infringement has occurred. There is no independent or 3rd-party entity that checks for copyright infringements. By the way, the similarity here is close enough that there might also be an issue of trademark infringement. But again, infringement requires use of a protected mark without permission, and so some of the same possibilities arise. (The source of a trademarked logo doe not matter. On the other hand there cannot be trademark infringement unless the mark has been registered, or actually used in commerce. If the same image is used on products in very different industries, say games and hammers, there may or may not be infringement.)
united-states You are protected by copyright as a matter of law, even if you don't post a copyright notice, although you have slightly more procedural rights if you do post a copyright notice and there would need to be a filing with the copyright registrar (a division of the Library of Congress) before you brought suit. You can't really get any other intellectual property protections for it except possibly a trademark if you have a distinctive mark or name or logo for the app.
Copyright infringement requires copying. The inventor could very reasonably invent a device without any reference or even knowledge of the artistic depiction in the Portal games. If the inventor hasn't copied anything, they aren't infringing copyright. Also, with respect to 2d depictions of 3d objects, only architectural drawings are protected in that way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_the_United_States With respect to your patent question, Valve hasn't publicly disclosed how to make a Portal gun, so an inventor of a Portal gun would not be blocked from patenting it. You can't get a patent without describing how to actually make the invention.
If the app (and the service accessed from the app) truly doesn't have any EULA, ToS, or license agreement, to include restrictions on reverse engineering, you can probably create an alternate front end, so long as you aren't using their logos, etc. However, their data may be a different beast, depending on the nature of it. For example, extracting data from Twitter would potentially violate Twitter's license on the original text copyright held by the authors in question. Wikipedia explicitly includes redistribution in their license agreement with authors/content creators. If all you are extracting and storing is the temperature at a particular weather station, you might have less of a concern. Anything beyond merely factual runs the risk of a copyright infringement as you store the data in your own database.
A person who uses a name similar to an existing protected trademark may have committed trademark infringement. The trademark owner can sue, and possibly collect significant damages, and possibly also get an injunction against further infringement. Note that this is not a matter of a crime, but of a lawsuit by one person or business against another. (A point of terminology: A trademark, like a copyright, is said to be &quot;infringed&quot; when someone uses it without permission in ways that the law does not allow. The word &quot;broken&quot; is not used for this.) In many countries, only marks properly registered with the appropriate national registry are protected. In the US simply using the mark can lead to its being protected, although registration can give greater rights to the mark owner. Protection in one country does not give protection in another. In general, protection only applies in the same or a similar market area as that in which the mark is already being used. An electronic game may well be similar enough to a card or board game for protection to apply. A key question is how similar a mark can be and avoid infringement. The basic test is if a reasonable person could be confused into thinking that the products were from the same maker, or were affiliated, or that the maker of the original product or service endorsed the new one. This is always something of a judgement call. If a mark is similar enough that a judge or jury might think that some reasonable consumers would be confused or mislead, then there is risk of an adverse judgement. Note that even an unfounded suit may be costly to defend. If there is any question, consulting an experienced trademark lawyer may well be a good idea. I will not express an opinion of the similarity of &quot;2oobbllee&quot; and &quot;Dobble&quot;. That would be legal advice. But if the OP were to change the name of the app, the whole matter would seem to be finished with no risk of court action. Note that the concept of a game, unlike the name, cannot be protected, neither by trademark law nor by copyright law,
The rule you are alluding to with respect to a television set is called the "first sale doctrine" which basically prohibits copyright and trademark owners from limiting the ability of a buyer of a good (like a CD or authorized logo T-Shirt) protected by copyright or trademark, from limiting further sales of that good (or the manner in which the good is used by its new owner) after a first retail sale of the good with copyright or trademark protections. This doctrine was derived from an old common law rule that invalidated "restraints on alienation" of property other than intellectual property on public policy grounds, and like the "restrain on alienation" rule for tangible property, the first sale doctrine that applies to intellectual property was also (at least originally) a court created common law rule. But Minecraft isn't, conceptually, a good. It is a continuing service provided over the Internet, and firms that provide continuing services on a licensed basis, as Minecraft does, can impose terms of service (a.k.a. an "end user license agreement" a.k.a. EULA) which must be complied with in order for users to be allowed to continue to utilize the service. So, its prohibition on exchanges of things of real world value for things of game value, except as the terms of service authorize, is permitted. A user of Minecraft is more analogous legally to someone skating at an ice rink than to someone who buys a CD or book. If you buy a ticket to skate at an ice rink, the people granting you the license to use the ice rink have the right to set rules governing how you utilize that service, and to terminate your license if you don't follow the rules (e.g. by skating in the wrong direction at the wrong time). Indeed, a ticket to an event is also known in legal parlance as a form of "license" just like a EULA, and licenses to use real property are the origin of the body of law that now governs the licensing of intangible intellectual property. A Minecraft license isn't something that you own (even if you have a license of unlimited duration), it is a qualified and limited right to use something that someone else owns, that you aren't allowed to purchase, but you are allowed to use on the owner's terms. How can they enforce servers to follow that rule if the server's are not using Mojang's proprietary software. The EULA or TOS obligation in the Minecraft business model is enforceable because Minecraft isn't in the business of selling proprietary software, even though it does do that. Minecraft is in the business of licensing access to data and online resources. The EULA regulates your access to the data on servers, and the computing power of those servers, not your ownership of an app which facilitates your use of the licensed services. And, while there are various contractual remedies for violating a EULA, the most basic one is a self-help remedy: to cut you off from your ability to use the service if you violate the owner's rules. Indeed, at least heuristically, the easiest way to distinguish an intellectual property good, which is subject to the first sale doctrine, from an intellectual property service, which can be licensed pursuant to a EULA, is whether, as a practical matter, the firm distributing the intellectual property has a practical ability to deny you service going forward without resort to the courts. If the owner of the intellectual property has no practical ability to do that, the intellectual property being distributed will probably be classified as a good and be subject to the first sale doctrine. But, if the owner of the intellectual property has the practical ability to cut you off from the intellectual property being distributed without resort to the courts, the intellectual property being distributed will probably be classified as a service, which is not subject to the first sale doctrine and may be licensed.