Hi guys, I've been reading a lot lately about intellectual property right and protecting your product before launch. To me, it seems like a big gamble to fork out even more money on a game that might literally get less than 100 downloads. However, I can see the massive benefit of protecting something that turns out to be very successful! Have any of you trademarked any of your game titles or game characters? If so, would you mind explaining how much it cost you and was it worth it? Thank you!
Last I checked (a year ago), it costs about $300 to register a trademark (in the US only). But all that does is give you some ammunition. Just having a trademark isn't going to magically protect your IP - you would need to spend more to actually initiate legal action. Apple (at least) is usually pretty good about taking down apps that ripoff your app if you reach out to them, and there's clear evidence of abuse/fraud. In any event, I think you're spot on about it being a gamble/economic non-starter. Even free non-featured games barely get any downloads these days. If you've got a great app and money to burn, probably better to invest it in development, art, and/or marketing. If your app takes off, you can always belatedly register trademarks after the fact. If it doesn't, it's probably wasn't valuable enough to protect in the first place.
I agree with the above post. The problem with intellectual propery is that is a greyzone where you can actually copy quite much and come away with it. As stoffolino said, don't worry about that stuff, at least not now.
We trademark almost all of our game names. We start with a local registration in NZ which if successfully gives you a six month window to then register in other countries and be the first claimant. Generally, covering off all the main territories costs about US$5-6k per name/title. Of course, that is only part of it. You also need to be prepared to follow up and issue infringement notices to infringers and Apple etc, which is takes time and ultimately money. You don't NEED a registered trademark to have some claim over a name, but it certainly strengthens your position a lot. But it does come at a price.
I trademarked Daredevil Dave, but only after the game had made a substantial amount of money. It cost me $700 USD because I used a Trademark Attorney. Seemed like a good idea at the time. As for whether or not it was worth it, I don't know. I get to put a little "R" next to his name so....
I guess I struggle to see how for most indies on a mobile game will be practical. Obviously great to do if you can and have a high expected return on investment.
I feel like there are tons of knock offs of your flick football game. Are u pursing them or how's that even work?
The mechanics aren't something you can protect. I am pretty sure the flick football was just a clone of the espn flash game ad's(although that was ages ago, not saying they copied but the mechanics had already been done) which where based on playing it on a table rather than on the field, but same mechanics.
