Remake copyrights

..yeah..I'm wondering whats the copyrights issues if anyone decide to make remake of any game from old Atari machines, or similar consoles from early begins of gaming era?

I would have thought copyrights would still apply. Sometimes it's okay if you're making it for nonprofit. I've been thinking the same, particularly about Pacman since I have an idea for a spin on it. And what about Pacman clones that aren't pacman (eg a spaceship collecting fuel cans instead of a fat yellow man eating dots)?

Well if you make a re-make you may or may not be asked to get rid of it depending on who holds the copyright and how funny they are about it. Basically unless the game has been totally released by the author or publisher as public domain then it's still copyright and you should be careful. Certain you can never resell a remake unless you obtain the rights from the original authror/publisher. As for cloning the gameplay, well that's not so bad IF you change all the graphics and sounds (and level layouts). If the graphics and sounds are too similar, you have copyright issues again. That's what I think anyway.

Non-profit isn't "OK" either. Often remakes will get a letter asking them to stop, and withdraw the download.

In the case of capcom with ghost and goblins pc remake, they had it removed.

The reason why they make you remove them (and they are legally allowed to do this) is because they own the ip, copyright and may still be making money from it - even really old games like paradroid for example...

So it's probably better to make a new game, which plays similar?

Realistically, the chance of someone contacting you for remaking an Atari game are slim to none. People remake games of higher notoriety like Mario, Sonic, etc. using original graphics and everything and rarely get contacted unless the game becomes wildly popular. Worst case scenario is that they ask you to take down the game, you're not gonna end up in court over E.T. part II.

It's true, you gotta temper legal paranoia with realism. I'm not very good at that am I One Eyed Jack ;-) ?

I would think that Infogrames would be careful (protective) about the use of "Atari" brand and games these days... and there is also already new "Retro Atari Classics" game out.

There is also likely to be more issues with the advent of playing old arcade games on the PSP. I'm pretty sure the old games are being released again by the companies that originally made them.

Heh Grey :)

Eikon, time to google I think:
Atari especially have a long and detailed history of suing people who make clones of their games. A lot of the cases don't get as far as court, but the end result is the same, Atari go after people.

Eeeek, better tell everyone making space invaders to watch their backs.

The only things about a game that can be trademarked or copyright are:
Graphics
Music
Sound
Text
Level Layouts
Names
Titles
Trademarked Characters (mario, sonic)
Code

How the game plays, and even the general layout of the interface can't be protected. SO you can make pacman with all that diff. and it is not just legal, it is considered a completely different game.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Legal Minefield, often referred to as Grey Area.

Taking Pacman as a case study, Pacman himself is a trademark so you'd have to change the lead character - that isn't as hard as it sounds considering modern Pacman games have already evolved Pacman's appearance. However there's no problem in you making a maze game where you have to run around collecting pills and avoiding the mazes' law enforcers, an ethical question maybe, but no legal problem.

If gameplay was trademarked then computer games would have died a death in the early 80's as a passing fad and we'd have gone back outside and not turned into a bunch of obese keyboard tappers.

Actual work such as sound, graphics, code is copyrighted - the length of a copyright varies on country. In China copyright expires in the time it takes to write out the import documents, in Great Britain I think it's 50 years - but basically if it wasn't written by Mozart then it's copyright and if it was written by Mozart than the recording of it is copyright [by the orchestra]...

DampeS8N raises an interesting one, level layouts being copyrighted. I wonder how true that is, imagine a 2D driving set in a desert with the odd shrub to avoid - kinda hard to copyright... If we're talking a Quake level then it's easy to see how that would be copyrighted - but if the graphics are different would it be recogniseable... I don't think level design is copyrighted - yet it's probably the one bit that makes a remake closest to the original.

They can trademark the character Mario but am I right in saying that they can't possibly trademark the name?

..basicaly, what I'm looking for is some copyrights infos about copyrights over ancient Atari console game XYBOTS..we (me and 3 guys more) wanna make remake of this 3rd person game from ancient era of game world..I did send few emails to Atari/inforgames/, Australian office, but by now noone reply to me, and few emails is returned and not delivered (recipient email doesnt exist, even its listed on Atari's web site..strange!)..I dont know where to look to get proper info about copyrights over Xybots...Atari dissapointed me a little bit..everythings looking pretty messy..

Amon... the names Mario Mario and Luigi Mario are trademarked..

However... so is Mario De'Luigi ... who they named mario and luigi after.. It is a person's name and a name of his company.

so... yes.. the name is trademarked and so is his design.

It's like DampeS8N says, more or less* - Peek here.


*When "design" is discussed in relation to a trademark I think it pretty much concerns itself with stuff like the look of the logo etc (ie branding); When you talk about "design" in relation to videogames you're talking about character art and whatnot - the sort of thing that copyright is supposed to protect. There's defo' some cross-over though.


It's still being sold in the Midway Arcade Treasures collection so my guess would be that their blessing is out of the question.

www.agdinteractive.com actually got away with remaking king's quest 1&2 (and are currently getting away with remaking quest for glory 2) because when sierra found out about it, they actually authorized it. so the moral of the story is, if you make a remake of a video game, your fate depends upon the company.

Naughty Alien, have you read the Copyright/Trademark FAQ on my website? It's tailored towards games. It may not necessarily be 100% accurate, but it will open your eyes on the subject a bit.

Atari are a tough one, after their demise Atari's intellectual property rights where bought by what can only be described as a firm of lawyers who then proceeded to sue anyone who connected an electronic device to a television screen... The reason Atari still gets bought and sold today is for those intellectual property rights, and because mobile phones are fundamentally less powerful than a broken ZX Spectrum, Atari games are vogue again...

I see nothing wrong with a remake, I see nothing wrong with saying what game influenced you - I would just rename it, even if subtley.

For my Archon remake I approached Jon Freeman (the designer) directly. I believe EA's ownership of the Archon name expired some time ago, and ownership returned to the designers/developers. Jon was very helpful (he provided me with much of the original C source code) and was happy for the project to continue to develop. The only caveat was that we cease development should he decide to do something himself. Fair enough. He was also happy for us to potentially make money from the venture, but I decided to continue down the freeware route.

Sorry to open up an old thread, but where is your archon remake? ;)

I'm meeting Atari on Thursday, I'll ask them about their position on remakes.

in the meanwhile... i would operate on the safe assumption, that any unauthorized use of trademarks and copyrights is not a smart thing to do...

someone mentioned legal paranoia above... they were right... if you choose to mess with things that other people have legal ownership of, then you should be scared...

--Mike

.

>in the meanwhile... i would operate on the safe
>assumption, that any unauthorized use of trademarks and
>copyrights is not a smart thing to do...
>
>someone mentioned legal paranoia above... they were
>right... if you choose to mess with things that other
>people have legal ownership of, then you should be
>scared...

Welll put(Yes I know, I never thought I'd agree with you again, but There You have it)


Andy

I begun a remake a few years ago but the original programmer
is like disappeared from the planet. All his old sites and
emails are not valid anymore.... ;o(

The programmers name is "Ed Hobbs" and the game is "Castles of doctor Creep"

There's a limit to that trademark. There are real people called "Mario" and real people called "Luigi". So they cannot sue me if a character of a game of mine has one of those names. At least not when the names are taken into a difrent content. If my real name would be "Mario" and I make a game about myself, they would otherwise sue me for using my real name. Of course, care should always be taken. But then again, if you can trademark names that are names of real people (dead or alive), then no name can be taken in the end. Nearlt every name has been used in either a book, movie or computer game. (BTW, my real name is NOT "Mario", but I needed to clear out the point) ;)

On making remakes of old games.
That's still tricky.
I did find a few "abandonware sites" while doing some pointless browsing, when I was bored. I could see a lot of games there no longer available for download as the original author or company objected on that. That makes clear that old games are still copyrighted, and that it may still damage the original programmers when that copyright is violated. Not surprising since old games are really popular. And honestly, I often think they were better than new games, despite the less technological possibilities (or maybe because of that).

The official rule is that a product is copyrighted until 50 years after the programmer's death. If the product comes from a company which is basically immortal, then it 50 years after the release date. I don't think that 50 years have passed since the ATARI time.

But sometimes that just plain silly. I mean, sometimes a company sues you because they might, very perhaps, very very maybe, put in a extremely small possibility to reproduce it, blah, blah, blah. That chance will never come, but when there's money to earn, people just grab it. And the problem is the international laws are on their side.

Even when the original programmer is "disappeared", like in Wedoe's case, they might appear out of nowhere when you remake a game without their permission. I don't expect that last thing to happen, though.

My meeting has moved to 12:30 today, I'll let you know what Atari think about these remakes.. Shall I mention my Asteroids clone to them? (don't think so)

Anyway, didn't atari nick Pong in the first place?

sure there are... just as there are many people named Ford, Ferrari, MacDonald...

...but if any of these people decided to open up a car company or a fast food joint, using their names as a registered trademark, i bet they'd find themselves in court faster than you can say Perry Mason.

and of course your game can have a character named Mario in it... but if your character has any resemblence to the one in the more famous game, and if he hops around from platform to platform... be prepared for a lesson in trademark infringement...

one final word... anyone can 'sue' anyone, for any reason whatsoever... using a trademark or anything close to one is only making it easier for someone, especially the rightfull owner of the trademark, to sue you...

don't be a fool... don't make a movie called Star Wars, with a character called LukeSkyTrader... and not expect to be famous... and in court...

--Mike

The word from Atari is if you're gonna make a clone of an Atari game and you think you can do a good job of it (ie bringing it upto date) then contact them because you might just earn some nice $$$.

Interesting!

The 'real' Atari died years ago, but who owns the name now?

Infogrames

>Interesting!

I wouldn't get too excited. Even Infogrames don't make money out of Infogrames.

Making a game on spec based on IP you have no ownership of is probably the single worst way to go about earning money.

Basically they can offer you 1p if they like. It's not like you could possibly go elsewhere.

Non-starter.

lol. Yeah it's only interesting, I'm not gonna do it!

I always wondered why Infogrames has an r in, it always seemed like a typo that made it into the final logo.

Also didn't some of Atari split off and make activision or something? Maybe I should wiki... ah yes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision

Yeah it's true that Atari are losing shed loads of money on Games via the traditional retail channel, probably why they have decided to take a different approach to the business. You might want to wait a few months to see what they are really up to, currently they are aquiring companies, rights and IP like crazy mad men.

I'm not selling Grey Alien Games until they offer 6 figures (In Pounds) ;-p oh and that's not including a decimal point or commas for you pedants!