Industry Practice: Legal and Economic Frameworks
What is Copyright Protection?
Copyright Protection is the law that governs how Intellectual Property may be used by those who are not the proprietors of it, that typically being those who are not associated with its ownership or creation (Gov.UK 2025). Intellectual Property, then, is something created by someone: Intellectual Property may be a product, a piece of art, a story, design or icon (Gov.UK 2025). Intellectual Property may be 'tangible' or 'intangible'. Tangible works represent those that quantifiably exist in a physical sense, being physical products, artworks, books or ideas that physically exist. Intangible Intellectual Property is given similar protection, but exists in a none-physical sense. Nonetheless, these pieces of Intellectual Property still bear monetary value, as they represent a potential for monetisation or may constitute a part of a wider piece of Intellectual property.
In the UK, Copyright protection is assigned automatically and does not require registration: it is gained automatically when an appropriate Intellectual Property is created, such as when a book, artwork or piece of music is created. This places the Intellectual property under copyright protection (Gov.UK 2025). This protection means that copyright infringement upon the work could result in legal punishment on the part of the infringer, as copyright protected works cannot be copied, have copies of it distributed, or be put onto the internet without the consent of the copyright holder (Gov.UK 2025). These protections cease to be in effect upon the expiration of the copyright protection. This occurs after a certain number of years have passed, with this length of time being determined by the type of Intellectual Property that is being copyrighted. For example, the copyright protection on literature and art expires 70 years after the death of the author (Gov.UK 2025).
In the terms of the games industry, the copyright protection applied to video games is somewhat different to that of a book, film or other creative work. As video games are comprised of multiple different types of media, such as writing, artwork and music, different aspects of a game may be individually under copyright protection in their own right, protecting the game as a whole through a multitude of individual instances of protection.
Design Rights
Unregistered Designs
In the UK, unregistered design rights are applied automatically upon the creation of a work. This protection lasts for 15 years after the point of creation, with proof of ownership being necessary to enforce protective rights.
Registered Designs
In the UK, registered design rights last for longer: 25 years. However, registered design rights are not applies automictically upon creation, requiring a registration process to be undertaken to achieve these rights. Registering a design makes ownership easier to prove (Gov.UK 2025)
Multiple elements of a game - such as its user interface or character designs - can be registered. Only original works can be protected in this regard.
Design Rights & Our Game
As a group, we discussed these design rights and how we could protect different aspects of our game. We decided that the characters are too general in design to undergo such protection: as they are animal-headed symbols of mental health conditions, the basis of their designs lies heavily in trope. As such, it could be considered that - though we made them originally - the basis of their design is set in commonplace, and as such registration would not be possible. This does not bother us, however, as we are confident that our designs to not copy from the work of any other and proof of ownership is not an issue in our conscience.
Certain aspects of our game and our studio could, however, be put under trademark, such as our studio and game titles. This would show that our game and studio titles signify a product or service, that being the games that we have produced (Gov.UK 2025). However, again, we will not go ahead with this process as we do not feel it is appropriate for our project. Nevertheless, it is a consideration we have made in our production of our game.
Non-Disclosure Agreements
Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) are legal contracts that bind the participants of the contract - typically employees of a company - to not disclose elements of a project or company to competitors and the public (Gov.UK 2025). We previously created one of these documents to show how we, as a company, would hold our intellectual property.
Gov.UK, 2025. Intellectual Property and your work: what intellectual property is [online]. Gov.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-an-overview [Accessed 30 January 2025]
Gov.UK, 2025. Register a design: Overview [online]. Gov.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/register-a-design [Accessed 30 January 2025]
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