Main > Everything Else
Commercial use???
shmokes:
--- Quote from: quintinbiker on May 30, 2012, 01:58:09 am ---
They say that games like pacman is copyrighted right?
Where in the world can you still buy a brand spanking new pacman board, if someone knows please tell me, and I'll buy a ship container full and become ritch over night, because i've never seen a brand new pacman board (Origonal board) up for sale.
So yes, the game might have a trademark to it and the trademark is copyrighted.
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You're conflating multiple types of intellectual property here.
Trademarks aren't copyrighted. They're . . . trademarked. A trademark is just a logo or a slogan or the like that identifies the source of a product. Disuse can invalidate a trademark, but they don't expire. Imagine if after a certain period of time anybody could release products under the name Coke or Ferrari. As long as you're using them, trademarks last forever.
Copyrights protect authorship. Copyrights do expire, but it takes a long time. They last for something like the life of the author, plus seventy years (IP laws vary by country, of course). It's useful to think a little bit further about all the rights that are protected by copyright, beyond prohibiting outright copying. Say you write a book that has some reasonable success, but not enough to justify a second printing. Does the fact that it's no longer on the market give other people the right to copy and distribute your work? Who's to say that five or ten years down the road someone in Hollywood isn't going to adapt your book for a monumentally successful blockbuster film? Wouldn't you want to be paid for your work? Wouldn't you want to have rights over the republication of your book? And what about derivative works. After your book has been out of print for twenty years, would you be okay with some other person writing a sequel to it without getting your permission or paying you royalties?
The same thing applies to Pac Man. The original Pac Man is out of production, but other Pac Man games are still being actively produced by the rights-holders. And even if they weren't actively making new games based on the property, you never know what the future will bring. Who would've thought a 2011 sequel would be made of Yar's Revenge nearly 30 years after the original was released?
Le Chuck:
Q - I don't really get the purpose of your post. Are you announcing that you're planning on doing something, asking permission, seeking justification, or what?
If you want to put a MAME machine on location nobody is going to stop you. Doesn't make it right and it is something you have to balance against a personal code of ethics. I wouldn't advertize it on this forum tho since it doesn't jive against the collective (disenting opinion to the contrary not withstanding).
Hell, I'd wager in SA you could start producing your own boards to sell and nobody would/could stop you, still, doesn't make it right. Reselling an original product if fundamentally different than reproducing some one elses original product for resale. Where are you going with this then?
yotsuya:
--- Quote from: Chic Le Freak on June 01, 2012, 12:22:48 pm ---Q - I don't really get the purpose of your post. Are you announcing that you're planning on doing something, asking permission, seeking justification, or what?
If you want to put a MAME machine on location nobody is going to stop you. Doesn't make it right and it is something you have to balance against a personal code of ethics. I wouldn't advertize it on this forum tho since it doesn't jive against the collective (disenting opinion to the contrary not withstanding).
Hell, I'd wager in SA you could start producing your own boards to sell and nobody would/could stop you, still, doesn't make it right. Reselling an original product if fundamentally different than reproducing some one elses original product for resale. Where are you going with this then?
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Chic Le Freak? Did I miss something?
HaRuMaN:
--- Quote from: yotsuya on June 01, 2012, 01:00:28 pm ---Chic Le Freak? Did I miss something?
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:laugh2:
Le Chuck:
--- Quote from: HaRuMaN on June 01, 2012, 01:23:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: yotsuya on June 01, 2012, 01:00:28 pm ---Chic Le Freak? Did I miss something?
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:laugh2:
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Quiet you.
I am no longer in control of my own BYOAC destiny.