Moving to Business and Law.
I'm also not a lawyer, but I've dealt with lawyers many times and have read quite a lot on the subjects involved.
You could benefit from reading up a bit about the various intellectual property rights.
Copyright protects original creative works, like books, audio recordings, photos, movies. It protects the author's rights to distribute copies, to make derived works (like sequels), to publicly perform the work, and to publicly display the work.
Trademark protects names, logos, distinctive marks, and distinctive designs. Mostly they are used to help identify the source of a product. If you buy "Coca-cola" you know who it came from. Distinctive names like Superman, Batman, The Hulk, these are also trademarked so when you see them you know you are getting the official product.
Trade dress is similar to trademarks, protecting the distinctive appearance and look. For example, Subway Sandwiches has a distinctive look in their restaurants of pale yellow/brown subway maps, a white/yellow/green/wood color scheme, and certain decorative patterns. If another company had a different name but used those same distinctive appearance, they are likely violating trade dress protections.
You probably don't realize this, but just about everything you see in television and movies has gone through copyright and trademark clearance. Distinctive door panels, automobiles, clothing and wardrobe, chairs and other furniture, wallpaper, EVERYTHING, goes through clearance with lawyers. Major studios have broad licenses for common things, like vehicle companies and certain clothing manufacturers. Even so, note that most clothing is generic with few logos, most equipment is generic or uses custom-made sets rather than store-bought well-known brands.
With that in mind...
But when i see a car with the brand mazda or a screen of samsung in game. They mostly payed the companies to use their brand in game right?
Yes. When companies use the vehicle's name (trademark) and the vehicle's distinctive look (trade dress) they typically pay to license those rights.
Yet that doesn't explain how games like mgs and cod can use so many weapons under their name. Does no one care if you use branded guns or is there something behind it?
Licensing deals are everywhere.
I heard EA doesn't pay licensing for weapons on the grounds that they don't support weapons manufacturing or some such. I heard this only from someone who works for EA/DICE so I don't know how much truth is in that.
They tried it for a limited number of government-owned weapons designations. It didn't hold up in court. They ended up paying.
Hell, speak to a lawyer anyway. It's certainly cheaper than defending yourself against a lawsuit from smith and wesson
Absolutely. A $200 or $500 consultation and discussion is far cheaper than a $20,000 pre-court settlement or $500,000 legal defense.
if you have played GTA you'll notice there are a lot of vehicles that look very similar to vehicles you may have seen in real life.
Rockstar has legal team. The development team wanted to do it, and they had their lawyers review all the details. They did quite a lot of things that were borderline infringement and probably if challenged in the courts would have lost a lot of money. But the critical thing is that they had their lawyers review the details, and their lawyers evaluated the risks and potential costs.
If you want to do something like that, you also need a legal team who will review everything, and review the risks and potential costs.
If a copyrighted thing is in your game, but it's not a feature of your game. then it's fair use. For example, there's a Chewbacca image on a poster in the background of your character's room in an RPG.
Very wrong, for most of the world.
In the US, fair use for copyright is determined by a four-prong test. First, the purpose of the use, such as for educational use, for news reporting, or commercial use. Second, the nature of the copyright work being used. Third, the amount of the work being used, and fourth, the effect of the potential market value of the copyrighted work.
Using a Chewbacca image in a game basically fails all the prongs. It's purpose is entirely commercial (you have it as part of your game for decoration,not as a news commentary or educational tutorial about how the star wars universe is being marketed, or similar). Second, the nature of the work is entirely unrelated to your product; the use is entirely gratuitous. It is not like a <i>scenes a faire</i>, a stock item that needs to be included, you threw it in because it added value. Third, you used the entire work, the entire poster. You didn't have the bare minimum, you took it all. And fourth, the effect of the potential market is big. Star Wars makes the bulk of its money on merchandising and branding. Most businesses pay for it. I recently read it is somewhere around 4 billion dollars annually. You did not pay. If everyone used it like that, the damages would be billions of dollars per year.
Finally, Disney is very aggressive about protecting their legal rights and intellectual property.
So no, do not do that unless you want to get some legal nasty-grams and a high risk of a very costly lawsuit.
Trying to search over a list to see if the companies are outdated or not and to see if i can also put some modern guns into my game.
Somebody still owns the rights.
How about you have your artists get creative and make their own weapons that are unique to your game universe?
Be creative and make something unique and valuable, rather than using other people's objects and other people's creativity.
So i just need to figure out now which guns i may or may not beable to use in a game. Trying to search over a list to see if the companies are outdated or not and to see if i can also put some modern guns into my game.
