IP, Morality, and the Gaming Industry

IP. Intellectual Property. It’s theoretically what encourages creators to create, but here’s a dirty little secret: it generally (and I speak for the United States here, but there’s an increasing amount of conformity throughout the world) doesn’t protect games.

You see, there are two types of IP of general interest to most publishers: copyright and trademark. And, as we’ll see neither of them protects what’s actually the core of a good game design.

(And before I get going, let me carefully note, I’m not a lawyer, but I have been working with this sort of stuff for a while.)

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