Legal Guide to Video Game Development

by Dannenberg, Ross

• ISBN13: 9781634256216
• ISBN10: 1634256212
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-12-07
• Publisher: American Bar Association

Summary

This authoritative handbook takes you through the legal maze of producing a video game, from the moment you get the original idea through publication. This practical, prescriptive book is an essential resource for legal professionals with clients in the area as well as for video game developers.

Each chapter in this revised edition of Legal Guide to Video Game Development contains a general road map to one legal aspect of video game production:

• Patents, Copyright and Trademarks
• Business and Finance Issues
• Risk and Insurance
• Intellectual Property Agreements
• Licensing and Open Source Material
• EULAs and Terms of Use
• The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
• Publishing Your Game

Written by experienced lawyers who work closely with their software and video game developer clients, this is a guide to the process of taking an idea and creating a product, from beginning to end. Chapters include the relevant forms, agreements, and contracts for that phase of production, as well as numerous helpful tips on negotiation and decoding legalese. The book features an online forms library with downloadable templates for the end-user license agreements, terms of use, and nondisclosure agreements you’ll need.

Legal Guide to Video Game Development is perfect for entertainment and intellectual property lawyers; art, design, trade, and law schools; and burgeoning artists with an idea, in need of a guide to get them to inception.

Author Biography

Ross Dannenberg is an attorney in the Washington, DC office of Banner & Witcoff Ltd., and handles a wide-range of intellectual property issues, including Internet, e-commerce, telecommunications, computer software and video game-related matters. He has prepared and prosecuted hundreds of patent applications in a variety of technical fields, and he has substantial experience with IP protection of video games, entertainment, copyright, trademark and domain name related matters.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Copyrights and Immediate Protection for Your Ideas
Chapter 2: Trademarks: Choosing Your Brand
Chapter 3: Protecting Ideas: Patents, Trade Secrets, and Contracts
Chapter 4: Business and Finance Issues
Chapter 5: Business Risk and Insurance
Chapter 6: Intellectual Property Agreements
Chapter 7: Content-Related Issues
Chapter 8: Taking Virtual Candy from an Actual Baby: Virtual Goods, Microtransactions, and User-Generated Content
Chapter 9: License Agreements, Privacy Policies, and Other Legal Considerations
Chapter 10: Social Media Considerations
Chapter 11: Advertising and Promoting Your Game
Chapter 12: Publishing and Development Agreements
Chapter 13: Legal Disputes