Do I sense another Hasbro coming on the horizon?

Ease up, Ninja Boy. We''re not out to steal your ideas! Most of the people here are trying to be helpful.

(BTW, music can be copyrighted too, right?)

"The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them." -- ISAAC D'ISRAELI

lntakitopi@aol.com
http://geocities.com/guanajam/

So as to set the record straight...

Copyrights are ideas expressed in a written form. Thus, to copyright music, you send in lyrics and actual sheet music scores.

Things like books, applications, etc..., are obvious, send the source.

Patents are the ideas expressed in physical form. Thus, you can create an actual ActiveX control and patent it and its processes. If you had a written document on how it worked, you could copyright that.

Thus, copyrights=ideas, patents=physical respresentations or an expressed idea.

Don''t confuse expressed idea with idea. I can have an idea about a game, but if I had actual working code, that is something else.

quote:Original post by Ninja Boy
All of my ideas are copyrighted and you may not steal them, but i need to know something. Should it be a 3-D game or a

One note of caution here for you....

Just because you say the idea is sopyright, does not make it so.

It is expressed in the copyright bylaws that an idea expressed in written media format (i.e. an email, pen and paper, scrawled out in blood on the flesh of a virgin sacrafice), is evidence towards you owning the original idea, but not the end all proof.

Thus, all these sites that mark things copyright 2000, etc... doesn''t make it 100% so. They actually have to prove the idea was expressed prior to a time when the idea was used by/in some other way.

The only true copyright is when you have your work stored with the government, and you get a nice little paper saying so.

Wow Thanks everyone. That was very touching. But I dont think that he wanted to be lectured about Copyright laws.

Last Ninja used (uses???) 2D isometric to a very nice end. It all depends on what you are doing. If the game has a lot of puzzle solving, I''d go with 2D (top or side) or 2D isometric. If it''s just a lot of running around and fighting, 3D. I''m not saying that 3D is only good for running around and fighting, just that, that''s all I''ve ever seen done with it.

A word on copyright issues. No one is going to blatantly rip-off your idea Ninja Boy (or so I''d hope). If it inspires someone to make a game along similar lines, I don''t think a copyright is going to help anyways. Lastly, it is possible to copyright unpublished works.

quote:Original post by Joviex

Thus, all these sites that mark things copyright 2000, etc... doesn''t make it 100% so. They actually have to prove the idea was expressed prior to a time when the idea was used by/in some other way.

The only true copyright is when you have your work stored with the government, and you get a nice little paper saying so.

Some quick clarification... whether this is a true copyright or not is a matter of opinion.

If you are trying to claim someone else has stolen your text, the burden of proof will be on you. Registration will help, as would any other indisputable proof of origin.

If someone else tries to claim you stole their text, the burden of proof will be on them. In this case, a simple copyright notice will suffice for you until they can dig up something more substantial. At which point, you may wish you had registered something with a central body.

Technically, any literary work etc etc that you produce is 100% copyrighted internationally by you. This is stated under the Berne convention, as are the following points: copyright doesn''t have to be explicitly declared, and, copyright is automatically granted to the author of any original work.

I also quote, from the website of the US copyright office, "The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright." (See here for more details.)

Another problem cited by others lies in the fact that the US still does not fully implement the Berne convention in law. This is why it is recommended to register a copyright as although internationally your copyright will be recognised, if you can''t force someone to stop copying your work due to slack local laws, then your copyright is purely theoretical

I hope this has cleared up anybody''s misconceptions