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Is this considered copyright infringement
Hey Guys!
As I'm gaining experiencing and improving my modelling skills as well programming skills. I'm thinking of creating a series of demo tutorials to demonstrate things that have not been done in unity before or shown. One of the ideas that came to my mind is developing a 3D Pokemon demo tutorial or example in Unity. It will include what you would expect a Pokemon game to include (eg// Pokemon , items etc). My concern is that i'm wondering if this will be considered copyright. I plan on doing all the modelling myself and even mention that the brand Pokemon was not created by me and whatever that needs to be included.
Would this still be considered copyright after all that i've mentioned and how would it fair or change if i tried to put it on the asset store aswell
This question is more fitting for the forums.
Regardless, why take the chance?
Just do a "pokemon like" game but don't use any names/visuals etc of the real pokemon brand.
You can defiantly say stuff like "in this tut we will be making a pokemon like game".
pepole will understand and there is no need to go into the whole copyright issue in the first place.
I believe it should be a copyright infringement, but I don't know how these guys are still working on something like your idea.
Yeah i was thinking of doing exact that i was just concerned if there would still be an issue but thanks for answering the question when it was more fitting for forums as you mentioned
@swyrazik yeah i've seen this already . What i'm planning to do is something even more amazing that hasn't been implemented and i didn't want to do it if i was only going to get copyright problems. But as the previous answer mentioned i'm going to do something like pokemon with made up characters etc and my own ideas
Answer by DESTRUKTORR · Jul 09, 2013 at 03:09 PM
Under sandard U.S. copyright law, that is not copyright infringement. Copyrights are given to the creator of a specific work for the creation, and the creation only. The only way you could infringe on their copyrights is if you duplicated something they created and released it, publicly. That is, of course, assuming that there are no complications with the Japanese copyright laws.
However, copyright infringement isn't the real issue here. The real legal nastiness comes from the trademark infringement. Trademarks are a lot stronger than copyrights, and will get you into a lot more trouble, if you overstep them.
To give you an example, there was a group of people who were making a Lord of the Rings mod for Skyrim, and were forced by Warner Brothers (who own the trademark rights to all renditions of LOTR, in video game form, or at least they did at the time) to stop, with threat of pursuit of legal action.
Whether or not you "win" the case, the fact is that you don't want to get into a legal battle with a large corporation. Warner Brothers isn't the only company to make these threats, either. Many may remember the whole legal battle between Mojang (makers of Minecraft) and Bethesda over the use of the word "Scrolls," or the legal battle between Valve and Blizzard over DOTA 2, since the original DOTA was created using Warcraft 3.
Disney even threatened legal action for 5' likenesses of some of their characters in several day-care centers in Hallandale Florida, and demanded (and got) the drawings removed.
Corporate-owned intellectual property is not something to be taken lightly. Use those images at your own risk.
I guess what i will aim to make is something completely different with influences from pokemon but not a $$anonymous$$OD , because i've thought of other ideas that would make this really something , but also to show that your able to do quiet complex stuff using the Unity engine
The whole "mod" thing wasn't the legal issue with the Skyrim thing. Warner Brothers doesn't own Bethesda (the owners of Skyrim). The cease and desist order was based purely on the grounds that the mod involved trademarked materials from LOTR, and was a video game. Pokemon is pretty much all trademarked out, so I doubt you'd be able to find a medium where you could get away with using their trademarked materials, and not risk having some company breathing down your neck until you remove them.
$$anonymous$$y suggestion to you would be for one: Never use the word Pokemon in this project. Come up with another word. Just make a simple universe where people use small monsters in a similar way to the way they wer used in Pokemon, without using any terms that were originally coined by them, and without using images or likenesses of any of their characters, unless they are changed enough and are explicitly explained in such a way that anyone looking through them could, beyond reasonable doubt, state that they were not the same character.
In other words, they can't sue you for using a knockoff. Just make sure you change the names, and add easily visible, distinctive differences in the characters' and objects' appearances.
Yeah thats the direction i'm going in a complete different universe will summary what direction i'm going to head with the project. It also sparks new ideas as well
Honestly, if you really wanted to do this, I would suggest getting a lawyer (or at least someone whose legal advice you should trust more than some random guy on the internet) to look it over for you and tell you if they think it's overstepping the boundaries.
You need to keep in $$anonymous$$d that when you see TV shows do parodies of trademarked media that those shows have nigh constant access to several dozen lawyers who can tell them exactly what they think they can get away with, not to mention that they would be far better prepared for any legal action, should the owner of the original rights decide to take it, but yet they still are extremely careful about how they do that stuff.
I would really suggest co$$anonymous$$g up with your own stuff, and just making a world with the same archetype as Pokemon (trained monsters that fight one another), and try to separate it as much as possible from Pokemon, or any other trademarked material.
Answer by asduffo · Jul 09, 2013 at 03:44 PM
I think you should ask that in the forum. Anyway if you use something like PoRkemon, write on the bottom "inspired from pokemon. all of the copyright is from nintendo and gamefreak.inc" and you use names like prodichu / berlusomon (you understand the joke only if you are italian), it should be ok
Answer by Nanity · Jul 09, 2013 at 03:13 PM
As soon as you ask for money (asset store) on copyright protected material, you'll get your fingers burned.
If you made free tutorials, with white-blue "Bokkeballs" and a pink mew remix with 3 tails and no head, you should be on the save side.
Everything inbetween on your own risc!
Edit: ninja'd
lol white blue "Bokkeballs" that actually made laugh proper.Yeah thats exactly what i'm ai$$anonymous$$g to do , but it probably might not be pokeballs or "bokkeballs" but something completely different. However with all the answers now i'm ai$$anonymous$$g to do something completely different from pokemon even with the trainers to the pokemon. But the gameplay element will re$$anonymous$$d you of pokemon as you battle with monsters gain experience etc but adding my own features to enhance it the way i want it to be.
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