"You are approached by an industry magazine to promote your company and to talk about copy write law, intellectual property and how important this is to your company and the industry as a whole."
In the games industry it is extremely important to have intellectual property so that your work is protected and saved from being stolen or used by other companies. The types of things that are protected are all things that are original and are created with your mind and your mind only, these things being Names of things, Designs and things you make, write and produce. But this isn’t the only way intellectual property works, if you have bought rights to property from other companies or creators, then it can belong to you as well. Intellectual property can have more than one owner, and can also be traded or sold to other companies but only if you allow it. Protecting your intellectual property makes it easy to take legal action if your work is stolen or used. There are different types of protection depending on the what you create, there is an automatic protection for Copyright and Design right. But there is protection that needs to be applied for, for things such as, Trade marks, Registered designs and patents, these properties should be kept secret until they are registered because someone might steal it before its protected.
Not only is intellectual property important in games companies, so is Copyright. It is completely free and is automatic. The types of things you get copyright for automatically is, original creations like art, Music and sound recordings, etc. Copyright stops people from copying your work, distributing it, performing or showing it off, making a rip off of the game,or putting it on the internet. My game can be protected in other countries with international agreements. Something you might not know is that copyright actually expires, for example sound and music lasts 70 years after published, and art and written work lasts 70 years after the death of the creator.
In conclusion both intellectual property and copyright is incredibly important for not only games companies, but all companies because you don’t want your work to be taken from you without consequence because you spent your time and hard work on it and for people to profit off of it without putting any effort in isn’t fun.
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