Quote:Original post by Extrarius
Maybe so, but you still need lawyers to argue that the case should be thrown out and you don't get a free one for civil law cases.

Of course, I'm not arguing against your advice or anything - in these kinds of cases you'd be wasting a lot of money on lawyers even if the case is completely ludicrous.

@Sirisian: I've seen WcDonalds and Moogle in anime before, but it's still a case-by-case argument. Those may have been valid parodies and/or had some sort of licensing agreement with the company in question. On a really bad day, one could get sued for slander or trademark dilution or some such, depending on the circumstances.

I guess a related question would also be: does the OP really need (and have the financial resources) to model on such a large scale? GTA and such are actually very small and not really representative of the cities in question, but rather made in "spirit" of the cities. Making things "in spirit" is much safer since it involves a lot of creative content that is original and hence not potentially subject to lawsuits.

So at the end of the day, the best advice (given the valid need to create such content) is probably to go see a lawyer up front to avoid embarrassing and expensive situations further down the road.

Quote:Original post by Palidine
Different cities around the world have different policies. For instance, IIRC, it's ok to use Paris, but it's not ok to destroy monuments at runtime. i.e. you can have a pristine Eiffel tower or a destroyed one but the player cannot see it get destoyed.

The complexity is that there is no uniform copyright law that holds internationally. Different countries have different laws so you have to essentially obey the law of the country whose city you are displaying.

-me

Really? They did it in twisted metal 2, but I guess that was a long time ago. Do you know when they instated that rule?

The rule has probably always been around. they may have only just recently started caring about it. Anyway, this was just stuff I heard 2nd hand from people at work discussing various world city options for a game-set. Basic point just being that, yes, cities do care (and care about wierd things) so if you're going to be high profile you probably want to have a team of lawyers look into things and/or talk to the city to get a license.

-me