In summary, this means that the patent owner has the right to sue and/or seek judicial orders to compel other people to stop if they are recreating their invention as specified in the patent. PatentsĪ patent gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the patented invention. It will not discuss trade secrets, since board games rarely, if ever, concern proprietary information that is vital to the publishers’ or companies’ survival. This article will cover the first three of these with regard to US IP laws only. IP tends to be divided into four main sub-categories: 1) patents 2) copyright 3) trademark and 4) trade secrets. Inventions, poetry, movies, brand names and logos, and many other “creations of the mind” are captured under IP. IP is a category of property that includes intangible property of the human brain, or in short, one’s ideas. r/legaladvice and r/boardgames) and other various websites frequently confuse the various types of intellectual property protection. Section 1: What legal protections are possible?ĭifferent subreddits (i.e. The goal of this article is to provide game designers with an easy-to-understand guide to (IP) law, which is mostly federally regulated. Nevertheless, to be clear, this article is not providing legal advice. To date, there does not appear to be a simplified online guide, authored by an attorney, which explains intellectual property law as it relates to board games. This is where having a basic understanding of Intellectual Property (IP) law is helpful. With this kind of development process, the question arises: “What prevents someone from just stealing my game?” Have the community of players and designers tear apart your game so that you gather valuable input to implement and make the end-product as polished as possible. The first instinct when designing a game is to share your design with as many people as possible. One common question from game designers is how can they prevent third parties from stealing their games? This is a legitimate and viable question because a game designer typically introduces their game designs into a public forum to solicit feedback, which may be implemented into the end-product. Various websites, forums, and Reddit threads attempt to answer questions from game designers on what they are allowed to do when designing their games as well as how to protect certain aspects of their games. The laws involved in protecting board games are complicated. Join VA-barred Attorney Thuan Tran as he guides you through the intricacies of intellectual property law as it pertains to board game design.
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