Summary

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Summary

Developers have four tools to help them protect their intellectual property: trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, and patents.

Trade secret protection is valuable for developers because it enables them to protect any software product, business or technical documents, or special features or ideas in a product (including documentation) that qualify as a trade secret (gives a competitive advantage, not readily ascertainable, subject of secrecy efforts). Trade secrets require a lot of work to keep secret. They cannot protect many important ideas or features that are published or discoverable to others using the product. Trade secrets cannot prevent others from using the intellectual property if they have developed it independently. It can be used in combination with patent and copyright protection to provide more protection.

Copyrights are great because they can protect almost anything you can fix in a medium from unauthorized duplication and the preparation and distribution of derivative works. The Copyright Office will help you file special relief registrations for software that enable you to maintain the trade secret status of your intellectual property. Copyright's broad accessibility is matched by their inability to protect the underlying ideas, methods , and concepts of your software. Copyrights are also important for your artwork and business documents, though you should discuss if and when registration of these makes sense with your attorney. Copyrights may be used in conjunction with patent and trade secret protection to protect your software.

Trademarks protect brands. A developer will probably be most concerned with the trademark of its name , the names of any technology and tools that it markets, and the trademarks of any content properties it creates.

Patent protection is a powerful but controversial and expensive way to protect software. It protects ideas, methods, concepts, and many other features as long as they can be reduced to practice. Through a patent, a developer can create a monopoly on a technology or process.

All intellectual property that a developer creates, whether business documents, software, software documents, art, or anything else should bear the appropriate protective legend.

It is vital that a developer have effective NDA and assignment invention agreements signed by all employees and contractors, and NDAs with any parties to whom it will be disclosing trade secrets.

Table 5.7. Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Categories

Strength

Trade Secrets

Can be made public in certain forms and maintain its trade secret status;

Protects ideas, concepts, and methods, not just a particular embodiment thereof;

Protects special features or components of released software as long as the features are not readily reverse-engineerable;

No expiration date

Copyrights

Offers broad protection to many types of information and work;

Provides inexpensive protection for entire games with one registration;

Software can be registered with trade secret portions blocked out to maintain confidentiality

Trademarks

Prevents others from marketing works under the same or confusingly similar names

Patents

The ability to protect ideas, methods, and concepts as well as their embodiments;

The ability to prevent others from using the patented property, even if they developed it independently

Weakness

Trade Secrets

Only protects against disclosure by parties with a legal duty not to disclose (employees and third parties under NDA);

Nothing that is reverse-engineerable can be protected as a trade secret;

Do not defend against a third party's independently developing the same concept or product;

Can become expensive and time consuming

Copyrights

Copyrights do not protect ideas, concepts, or methods, which are often key to software's value;

In most cases, copyrights only protect literal copying, enabling competitors to clone with impunity

Trademarks

Costly to obtain, rigorous application procedure;

Does not protect against similar materials sold under a different mark

Patents

Long, expensive, uncertain registration process;

Pitfalls attached to the application process that require close monitoring by an experienced attorney;

Practice is controversial within the game development community



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Game Development Business and Legal Guide
Game Development Business and Legal Guide (Premier Press Game Development)
ISBN: 1592000428
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 63

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