Legal Issue..

Hello guys, i have been making games for the past 3 years as an indie developer but those games were never commercialized instead i only gave them to people i know. Now i have decided to go full-time indie dev and make it my living and already made 2 ready and polished "hyper casual games". The problem is one of my games has a name that is already taken by someone on playstore. Can i still publish my game there? will there be any legal issues like cease and desist etc. Does my game have to be copyrighted? and is this copyright international or country wise?, I am from Pakistan and new to commercial development. I would like to know all the legal related stuff there is to game development. Thanks in advance.

 

Only a lawyer can answer these questions and you won't find any of those who will answer your questions on this forum for free. Sorry. It's just a much too complex issue for anyone to give you proper advice on this here.

 

Pick a different name. Nothing can reliably prevent you from getting sued, not even having a lawyer. But not breaking the law drastically decreases the likelyhood of getting sued of course. If you want to do further research, I think you need to look more at trademark law than copyright law.
Using an existing name is also a bad idea for search engine optimization reasons imho, just don't do it.

 

Copyright laws vary from country to country, and are quite complex since you may need to consider the copyright laws of other countries either when enforcing a copyright or defending yourself from a copyright claim. But the name of a game isn't a copyright issue, but a trademark issue. That's a whole separate can of worms.

I'd just pick a new name (and have done so after starting a project only to find someone else swooped up the name halfway into development).

Did you really think you can learn everything you need in a forum thread? What do you think copyright lawyers spend years learning?

 

These 3 videos should answer a lot of your questions:

https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=8eAW-7Js7NA
https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=t8UFJ3obm-Q
https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=ePQcAjuiSEo


I'll try and answer some of your questions, but i'm not a lawyer and don't count on advise you get on the internet - go speak to a lawyer yourself, you can hire one internationally too if you wanna mainly sell overseas.

I think you are able to publish, but you're putting yourself at risk for a c&d that is stacked in the other games favor.

You don't have to register for a copyright, it just helps you out when facing legal trouble.
You also get some "copyright credit" by actually selling your brand.

if for example:
the other game released 1 month before you, didn't register and was unsuccessful
then you release, you register for copyright, trademark and all that jazz, and then sell a million copy

he can try suing you, but in my not-lawyer opinion you have a very good change to win said case, but this isn't something you can count on and it obviously varies from place to place

No such thing as international copyright, if you want a copy right in a country you're selling at you need to get it from them.



also

This is not a thing.

 

I agree, but another thing to consider is just being sued can be devastating by itself for an indie dev. The OP is in Pakistan, what is the OP to do if sued for copyright or trademark violations in Australia? Maybe he/she genuinely has a good case, but will still need to hire a lawyer in that foreign country to fight the case.

Even if you win the case, it depends on local laws whether you'll get your attorney's fees paid for (or even worse, if you lose and have to pay your attorney, the judgement, AND your opponent's attorney fees).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney's_fees)

 

I was just gonna edit my post to say so.
Even if you're right getting sued sucks all around, best to just avoid it like @Martin_H suggests