How can a gaming company be interested in registering a trademark, editorial office App2Top.ru Vladislav Arkhipov, an adviser to the international law firm Dentons, told the audience.
Vladislav ArkhipovIn general, a trademark is a designation used to individualize goods, works or services.
In business publications, the term “trademark” is often used – a literal translation of the English term “trademark”.
In different countries, the nuances of legal regulation of trademarks differ, but the general principle is the same – a registered trademark gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to use it. This means that other persons, as a general rule, cannot use such a trademark without the consent of the copyright holder. The absence of a ban in this case is not considered consent in most countries.
Among the exceptions – when it is possible to use a trademark without permission – is, for example, the actual reproduction of a “computer program” (i.e., a computer game) for personal purposes, and that is what legally happens when you play a game for fun. This leads to other advantages of the trademark, which are often talked about – first of all, it helps to actively protect the results of their creative activity and business reputation, because competitors, using a confusingly similar designation, can use the already established reputation of a successful project that is strongly associated with a trademark.
In addition, in modern conditions, a registered trademark in most cases makes it possible to prohibit others from using an identical domain name on the Internet.It is important to remember, however, that trademarks are not registered in relation to all goods and services, but in one or more specific classes (categories) of goods and services operating in the territory of the country of registration.
If a trademark is registered in connection with the publication of a computer game, it can be registered not only for those classes that directly correspond to computer games, but also for other classes that correspond to the general marketing intent.
It is also important to remember that a trademark is valid only in the jurisdiction where this mark is registered. Therefore, companies, especially large ones, register trademarks, at least in those countries where they intend to distribute their products, both under the national registration system and using international registration mechanisms. In this sense, trademark protection is not an easy problem for gaming companies in terms of content distribution via the Internet, when the game, from a legal point of view, will obviously be distributed on the territory of at least several countries. In addition, some designations, in principle, cannot be registered as trademarks – for example, state symbols.
Most often, verbal, pictorial, three-dimensional designations or combinations thereof are registered as trademarks, which is reflected in the legislation. But in some countries, it is also possible to register unusual trademarks – for example, sound or olfactory. And in the field of computer games and virtual worlds, there is a case when even an avatar image in Second Life (Aimee Weber in 2007) was registered as a trademark – although such a trademark will not be allowed everywhere and not in all cases.
Registration of one or more trademarks is one of the key ways to protect intellectual property on such a complex object from a legal point of view as a computer game, which must be taken seriously. Moreover, already at the initial stage of development, it makes sense to check whether any content of the game violates the rights of persons who have already registered their trademarks, and do not forget about developing a trademark registration strategy for large projects.