Advice on copyrights and recruiting

#1 If you are good enough, you may be able to get somebody to sign an NDA before they look at the concept. I have seen some of your writing and I think you may have a shot at that.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#2 You can't copyright ideas. You can copyright expressions of ideas. In any case, a good NDA as Jeff advises will do you well. The problem is, it's hard to enforce a breach of NDA without a good lawyer ... which means money ... which tends to be in short supply ;)

#3 The real paradox here is that for anyone you really need an NDA for you'll have a legal challenge trying to enforce it. I work in the design world and while ideas are copied and stolen it is usually once they are on the market and seeing some success, especially if you're opening a new genre.

I believe that formalizing the recruitment of a development team with an NDA can assist in raising the level of professionalism and expectation of confidentiality, but doesn't substitute for good due diligence and background checking. Finding team members who you want to work with is not simply a talent fit, but goes to their character and personality - identifying who you can trust is hard in the best of circumstances, but watching how individuals interact and contribute here in the GG community is a great way to get a first impression.

#4 Thanks, Jeff, for your comment. I plan on using NDAs with everyone because I think it's professional. But in my limited experience, trying the NDA dance before having money or at least an established team is like trying to convince a married woman to go home with you.

I understand copyright law in that an idea has to be expressed through some medium before it's copyrightable. What I'm not sure about is the definition of what expressed means legally in relation to video games. I have at this point around 50-70 pages of design documentation, though it still requires some more design work and organization. I've read a lot about writing design docs and I have been writing design docs for about six months now.

I have visual representations modeling the behavior of algorithms for some of the logic, rough concepts drawings, input/output definitions, and have written a lot about the finite state machine blackboard A.I. architecture I'm trying to design for the A.I., in addition to lots of other design details. So, what I'm asking is if I were to have a design document that was well written and organized in place of a finished game, would it be copyrightable and would I be protected from being copied? I have some experience writing scripts in the past and I know that they protect the creator from idea theft, and I don't see any real difference between a movie script and a design doc in terms of it being a expression of an idea. I know that no one here is a lawyer (and if you are, forgive me), but I'm more or less asking if anyone has heard or seen of anything related to copyrighting a design doc, if it was completed.

Actually, I just had a great idea for how to help designers recruit in GG without having to worry about idea theft. I'll start another post titled "Peer Review Proposal".

#5 Thanks Jay and Jeremy too, I was writing my reply to Jeff prob at the same time you were. Please read my other post "Peer Review Proposal" and respond. It proposes an alternative to this to help out designers.

#6 Shayne, copyright doesn't apply to ideas or concepts. It only applies to specific executions in a fixed media. You can copyright your design document, but that only protects the _design document_.

That means no one can distribute your document, but anyone is free to produce a clone game based on your idea.

You can't actually copyright your game until the game is already done.

The best you can do is get people to sign NDAs or even better (for you, not them ;) ) non compete agreements when you hire them.

Next best is trademarking your characters and settings, but that doesn't protect gameplay concepts.

I just try to have faith that everyone else is busy enough developing their own gameplay ideas that they don't have the time or inclination to try to steal mine.

#7 Thanks for replying Mark.

I don't know if I totally agree with the idea that copyrights only apply to ideas within a fixed medium. A movie script may be a in fixed medium, the written on, and a book too, but I believe that legal precedent protects movies from being made that are based on a book or script. An idea is actually copyrightable, though it must be expressed. I do not think it matters what medium it currently is expressed in. The only difference between an idea on paper and an idea on film is that they communicate themselves uses different forms of symbolism and sense perception, but they are intrinsically the same thing. Perhaps it is just that there is no legal precendence for a design doc fully protecting a game, and I think that's just a result of our industry being so young.

However, I see your point about it prob not being that big a deal anyways because everyone is trying to make their own anyways. I guess I'm assuming the worst before I even know it's possible. I will take a leap of faith here and try to make the assumption that no one cares that much.