Can I apply for a patent for my game? I am an individual developer making a game. Can I apply for patent, or is there any way to protect that game concept/idea, so that if any other developer or company wants to use that concept/idea in their game they'd have to get my permission? Example there are many racing games but I make a racing game in which players race backwards. I just changed the concept of the game. By definition, a patent is a protection for your intellectual property (that you invented) from being copied. In the case of your game idea, in the form of a patent, it is considered your invention. A patent is unique in the fact that it can protect your idea. The concept for your game that is uniquely yours can be patented and the idea behind it protected. Source:https://www.gamedesigning.org/career/sell-game-idea/ Can this change in concept be patented, or is there any other way to protect that concept?
If you have a truly novel and non-obvious game idea, you could patent it, and that would cost many tens of thousands of dollars if not hundreds of thousands of dollars (U.S.) in legal fees, etc. and probably a couple of years of patent prosecution, if your idea has not already entered the public domain through public display or sale. Most ideas for games are either not novel, or would be obvious to a person skilled in designing games. But, if your idea is really and truly new, you could do it.
In general, a gameplay video would be either a partial copy or a derivative work, and in either case an infringement if created without permission. Such a video might be covered under fair use in US copyright law, particularly if made for the purpose of commentary on a game or instruction in how to play or design a game. In general, a fair use defense is more likely to succeed if only the minimum amount of the work required for the purpose is used, and sound tracks might not be required for such a purpose. Thus a maker of such a video might choose to omit the sound to improve the fair-use case. Moreover, when the sound track contains licensed popular music it would be subject to a separate copyright, and many music publishers are notoriously litigious, so prudence would advise omitting the sound. All that said, fair-use is a case-by-case determination, and if the makers of such videos have not been sued, they (and we) can only guess how a case would turn out. As to why game makers refrain from having such videos taken down (if they in fact do refrain) one can only speculate. Game publishers may consider the videos good advertising. Questions based on the absence of legal proceedings are inherently speculative, unless a copyright holder has announced a policy of not taking action and the reasons for it.
Patents are not that relevant in this case. Software patents are unenforceable in most parts of the world anyway. What matters here is copyright. Every work contract has a clause that everything an employee creates as part of their employment is copyrighted by the company. So using company-owned code to build an own project would be a copyright violation. There are also other legal tools in some jurisdiction which can be used against employees trying to misuse intellectual company property. But that's a topic for Law Stackexchange. Also, this isn't really related to a BYOD policy. Being able to bring your own device to work and then back home might make data theft more convenient, but isn't required. There are many other ways to steal sourcecode, like USB drives or uploading them to the internet. To prevent the first you would have to design your software development offices like a supermax prison facility with meter-high walls (so nobody can throw a device over it) and strip searches on everyone leaving the building. This is neither feasible nor reasonable for anything below matters of national security. To prevent the second, you would have to completely prevent internet access from developer workstations, which would greatly impede the productivity of any software developer. So most companies do not even try to physically prevent employees from stealing sourcecode. They rather rely on the legal safeguards and on maintaining a mutual trust relationship with their employees. It might seem counter-intuitive to some, but when you do not treat your employees like potential criminals they are in fact less likely to betray you.
The software can’t be patented Since it was published before the patent application was lodged, the patent application should be rejected since it is based on prior art. You (or anyone else) can lodge an objection to the patent application on that basis to help the patent examiner find the prior art.
Ideas are not Subject to Copyright Copyright does not protect ideas. This is true in the US, in the UK, and under the copyright laws of every country that I know of. Article 2 paragraph 8 of the Berne Copyright Convention reads: The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. If the ideas of a work have been so re-written or recast as not to constitute a derivative work, the original author has no rights over the new work, which becomes a separate work with its own copyright. In such case there is no legal requirement for any credit or acknowledgement, at least not under copyright law. Also the use of a work whose copyright has expired, or is for some other reason in the public domain and not protected by copyright, may be legally made without acknowledgement of the author, or even under a false designation of authorship. Plagiarism Passing someone else's work off as one's own is generally considered to be plagiarism. Some people consider that using significant parts of another's work without proper credit is also plagiarism. Plagiarism is not a legal matter. It is considered highly improper in the academic and journalistic worlds, and may carry serious consequences there. It is considered unethical by many in other situations as well. However, it does not constitute copyright infringement, and copyright law cannot be used to prevent or punish plagiarism that is not also infringement. Works Created by an Automated Process or Script Whether an automated process can (at the current state of the art) truly extract facts and re-express them to a degree that would constitute a new, non-infringing work, I tend to doubt. Whether even sufficient alteration could be made by an automated process to reliably constitute fair use, fair dealing, or have any similar exception apply I also doubt. The US Copyright Office Compendium of Copyright practice (an official publication of the US Copyright Office) states in item 307: The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being. The copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884) Similar legal limits on AI authorship apply in many other countries. Fair Use Fair use is a specifically US legal concept, and generally does not apply in any other country, although I understand that Israel has closely followed US law in this matter. Fair use is defined by 17 USC 107. That law specifies four factors which a court must consider in making a decision on whether a use is a fair use. particularly important is whether the new work will harm actual or potential markets for the original, and whether it will serve as a replacement for the original. US Courts also often consider whether a new work is &quot;transformative&quot;, that is whether it serves a significantly different purpose than the original does. For example, in a popular song, lyrics are often intended to have an emotional effect. In a textbook on verse, the same lyrics may be used to demonstrate poetic technique, rhyme, meter, etc. That would be a transformative use. The presence of proper attribution or credit is often a significant factor in the decision by a court as to whether a use is fair. Using another's work without proper credit is significantly less likely to be found to be a fair use, although credit is not an absolute requirement of fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? and the various questions on this site tagged fair-use for many more details on fair use. Fair dealing and Other Exceptions to Copyright In the UK and some commonwealth countries, there is a doctrine known as &quot;fair dealing&quot; It is somewhat similar to fair use, but is generally more limited. In other countries there are various &quot;exceptions to copyright&quot;. Some countries have a few broad exception, some have many narrower exceptions. India, for example, has more than 28 separate exceptions. What is covered varies from country to county. Exceptions for teaching, comment and analysis, and news reporting are common. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention (linked above) recognizes such exceptions, stating: It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. The convention goes on to state, in article 10, that: (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. (2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union, and for special agreements existing or to be concluded between them, to permit the utilization, to the extent justified by the purpose, of literary or artistic works by way of illustration in publications, broadcasts or sound or visual recordings for teaching, provided such utilization is compatible with fair practice. (3) Where use is made of works in accordance with the preceding paragraphs of this Article, mention shall be made of the source, and of the name of the author if it appears thereon. Thus article 10 paragraph 3 of the Berne Copyright Convention establishes an international norm that works used under an exception to copyright, such as fair use or fair dealing, shall be properly credited. Web-Scraping The law on computer scraping is still under development, and varies from country to country. If a site operator makes it clear to users that scraping is unwelcome, it may be unlawful, depending on the rules of the country or countries involved. When a Terms of Service (TOS) document constitutes a binding contract or agreement that users must accept, and when such an agreement prohibits scraping or other automated access, that prohibition may be enforceable. in Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) a US Federal district court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). However, that decision has been criticized by many, and was not a Circuit court or Supreme Court case. In the recent case of Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) the US Supreme Court narrowed the application of the language in the CFAA making access that &quot;exceeds authorization&quot; criminal. In the case of HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. The Supreme Court addressed the question of whether scraping a public website after a cease-and-desist letter has been sent constitutes a violation of the CFAA (this was the fact pattern in Craigslist v. 3Taps). The Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration. The Ninth Circuit Court reaffiremd its prior decision that when the website had been made publicly accessible, the CFAA did not apply, even in the face of a C&amp;D letter. This seems to overrule 3taps. Note that other means of prohibiting scraping may still be legally sound and enforceable. See &quot;hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn&quot; from the National Law Review. (This article and the decision it reports was brought to my attention via a comment by user Michael Seifert.) The article &quot;Web Scraping Watch: Cases Set to Clarify Application of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act&quot; discusses these cases in more detail, but does not incloude the latest ruling in the HiQ Labs case. Conclusion Unless the results of the &quot;rewrite&quot; done by the &quot;program&quot; are sufficiently original to be neither a quotation, a fair use, nor a derivative work, but a new work using the same ideas, they will need to qualify under fair use or some other exception to copyright (unless permission has been obtained). This may well require a proper attribution of the original article. In any case, such credit is considered to be ethically mandatory by many. The web-scraping done to obtain the initial data may or may not be lawful, depending on the contents of any TOS document, and whether the relevant laws make such a document enforceable, which is still not a fully settled point under the law, and which varies by country. Personally, I would think giving proepr credit much easier and safer than trying to justify not doing so, but that is not law, just my opnion.
The designer/company owns the copyright to the original work, you own the copyright in the derivative work (the screenshot). However, your work is subject to whatever rights your license to use the game gives you and fair use/fair dealing. An example of a company attempting to enforce copyright from screenshots/screen recordings can be seen by the Nintendo Creators Program.
At least in theory an end user could be sued for infringing on a patent, especially a method claim. Given the cost of a patent lawsuit, this strikes me as extremely unlikely to happen though, unless the user in question were an extremely large company, or something on that order. Theoretically, the only difference between open-source software and proprietary software would be that availability of the source code makes it easier to prove use of a patent in open-source software. Releasing the software as open-source doesn't confer any immunity from patent law or anything like that though. Realistically, however, the chances of being sued for infringement if you're basically giving away the software in question are fairly remote. It rarely makes sense for a patent holder to spend millions of dollars on a lawsuit where they stand no chance of even recovering their cost (but no, that certainly should not be taken as legal advice that you're free to infringe on patents, or anything similar--in fact, none of this should be taken as legal advice at all). If you can actually prove that a technique was published or publicly known and used (e.g., in a product that was offered for sale) well before the patent was applied for, the patent is probably invalid (and if proven so in court, the case would normally be dismissed with prejudice, which basically means the patent holder wouldn't be able to sue anybody else for infringement of that patent). I'd note, however, that in my experience this is much less common than most people imagine--many look at (for example) the title of a patent, and assume it lacks originality because it refers to some well-known technique, and ignore the claims where it details the precise differences between the previously known technique and what the patent really covers. Just for example, the EFF used to have a web page talking about a (now long-since expired) patent on how to draw a cursor on screen. In an apparent attempt at scaring the unwary, they showed code they claimed infringed in the patent--despite the fact that the patent's "background of the invention" specifically cited the technique they showed as being previously known, and not covered by the patent.
Copyright doesn't protect methods, only particular fixed expressions. 17 USC 102 Some methods (but not algorithms) may be protected by patent. Diamond v. Diehr 450 U.S. 175 (1981) More exactly, "an algorithm, or mathematical formula, is like a law of nature, which cannot be the subject of a patent". However, in Diamond, the respondents here do not seek to patent a mathematical formula. Instead, they seek patent protection for a process of curing synthetic rubber. Their process admittedly employs a well-known mathematical equation, but they do not seek to preempt the use of that equation. Rather, they seek only to foreclose from others the use of that equation in conjunction with all of the other steps in their claimed process. Said another way: the algorithm cannot be protected, but if you are using the algorithm as part of a method or process that as a whole is patented, you would be infringing the patent. The paper does not have to disclose the patent - you could email the authors to see if they have any patent that protects any particular methods using the algorithm in the paper, but that doesn't rule out patents that the paper author is unaware of.