Hey guys! So i’m courious how much will it cost to claim copy rights and how should i do it. Me and my team are working on some decent project and as we put a lot of work into this and last thing we want is someone just copy or use some of our stuff without premission.
So here’s what I want to hear:
How much will it actually cost in Europe?
Where and how should I do it?
It costs nothing to copyright stuff. Frankly, it’s kinda automatic.
Trademarks are different story though…
Not quite enough said - enforcing copyright comes down to how much money you have for the most part.
Copyrights are free. You simply write or create an original work and publish it an be prepared to prove you created and published that work and the when and where of it too, especially the when. Trademarks are not free and you don’t want one until you see your 1st month’s sales.
Now doing a google search if you know enough about the EU and domain names you find it pretty easy to avoid the commercial placed results and go to the EU government page:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm
As you see it’s not the copyright that is the problem, but enforcing copyright laws when a copyrighted work has been plagiarized. For that you need a lot of money, good lawyers, and favorable laws. That’s the reason many media companies see the US as the most desirable market because copyrighted works can be turned into a salable asset most easily in the USA.
Paying a government entity for a copyright is silly as they didn’t create the work and have no legal standing to claim that work via requiring you to pay something like a ‘copyright fee’. It would be like asking you to pay for breathing, it’s absurd.
i think it greatly dépends on the country you live in and if you want to protect it locally or worldwide ($$$)
plus, as goat said, proving the origin of a indea is simple (just send yourself a sealed envelope with postal stamps on it)
but enforcing it is where it will cost you lots of money, for example, if you invent a fantastic machine, and if any chinese copr decides to copy it, you’ll have hard days trying to get justice from the chinese govt…
Going after chinese corp in this case would be IMO pointless because copyright in China is even less enforceable than here in Poland. You’ll have a better luck making cases in countries other than china against the company to stop them from importing/selling copy here. It’d be still sold in China but that’s about it.
So that means I can claim the copyrights for free but if somebody actualy fakes it then I can pay the goverment to kick that fakers ass Right?
And if that’s the case does copyright do something for you without you having to spend some money?
And yea I do understand that we can’t keep everyone from faking the game!
But I guess that won’t be that bad.
No, you pay some lawyers to go to the court and make it kick fakers’ arses ;).
IP protection laws are complex, but generally copyright is free and automatic. No one can directly copy the expression of your creative idea.
Ok thank you everyone!
Thats all I need to know!
Yes they are complex and vary by country, but basically fall into 2 categories.
Free rights. These include copyright, unregistered trademarks and EU Unregistered Community Designs. They give you rights over your intellectual property being copied, but someone else can come up with something similar independently.
Paid rights. These include registered trademarks, registered designs and patents. They give you rights over your intellectual property being used, even if someone else came up with something similar independently.
In all cases you will have to defend yourself legally at your expense, but proving the case is easier with paid rights, especially if the infringement was before your work was well known.
Registered trademarks. It’s also possible to defend an unregistered trademark in court, if you can prove someone was deliberately trying to create brand confusion.
Like I said, complex.
But first you have to create something worth copying 
Yes, unregistered trademarks are usually defended under “passing off”. I used the word “include” as I did not cover the full extent, and still have not. There are various other types of IP protection, some specific to 1 country. I have edited my post to make the distinction you covered.
First you want to trademark your brand(company name, game name and logos). Trademark will help proof you are without a doubt the original copyright owner. Copyrights only protect your stories and art work, they won’t protect your mechanics. If you do run into a copyright infringement, your first line of defense is compliant to store front. Then expensive legal action but you need to register your copyright before you can do that.
That line especially. Not putting anyone down. Its just real difficult!
To add to what previous people said:
Forget about copyrights in Europe(the registration in Belgium is a joke), the most efficient way to secure legally your copyrights “worldwide” (of course it wouldn’t prevent to get copied in countries like China, Ouzbekistan or whatever) is to get your works registered directly at the Copyright Office:
http://www.copyright.gov/
You have to get through the eCO system:
http://copyright.gov/eco/
See the tab “recommended reading”? Read/print/save those pdf’s because you will need them as they’re are a lots of screens and infos to provide 
You might want to start with this guide:
http://copyright.gov/eco/eco-tutorial-standard.pdf
In a nutshell, what you’ll submit for a game are mainly all the visual arts and the music tracks (if it’s yours of course, think about your contracts if you work with freelancers). The standard application costs 55$ (so that will be 110$ with visuals and music separated) and lasts for a long time (unless they change the law). After a few months, you’ll even receive a nice certificate in your mailbox (the real one, not the e-mail).
For trademarks and patent, it’s a whole different issue and would need a different thread. TLDR: Copyrights are only for registering your art assets.
I would strongly advise against going the “free” road, as it could potentially bite you back much harder when someone steal your works. When I say “stealing”, I’m not talking about piracy or so-called “fair use” (yep, my avatar comes from the game “Gray Matter” by Jane Jensen) but rather when some random guy just take your assets and sells them under his own name. You can search for “music horror stories” where tracks for licensing are resold through music aggregators like cdbaby and such under a different “artist” name. Good luck to prove your rights if you didn’t register your work… Closer to videogames, there have already been some IP thefts cases on Steam Greenlight.
So to put this in one sentece. If I buy say the standart application for my soundtrack and artwork and then somebody desides to steal it then I can start yelling and people will actully give a shit?
And what happenes next do the guy that steals gets taken down or does he have to pay penalty or goverment is just listening to me and waiting when I give them some cash so then they can do some thng with that other guy.
I’m not a lawyer but the usual procedure is to send a DMCA or “Cease & Desist” letter to the platform holder (Amazon, Steam, Google, etc.) to get the infringing items taken down. In most cases it generally stops there.
The next step is to sue the stealer but needless to say that it can be too much trouble in terms of time/money/trouble and totally worthless if the culprit is some insolvent guy in a poor country. Now if it’s a legit company, you can try but as mentioned, it means getting a lawyer, getting to court, etc and you’ll generally have to prove the infrigements and the “damages”.
More on this:
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/ZacharyStrebeck/20150416/240490/The_most_important_reason_to_register_your_copyrights.php
In general, you can read some articles by this author to get some overview but keep in mind it’s the US legislation and that he writes articles to promote his services.
I had no ideal the US government provided that. It’s pretty nice service actually.
Go see a lawyer if you are concerned. You’ve probably exhausted the sensible legal knowledge of the internet. Further advice is likely to lead you down the garden path.
I wouldnt waste my time or money.
Until you actually have something successful on your hands. At that point, it will still be difficult to stop people copying you. Youll have to:
Unless you are actually making 10k+/month I doubt any of the above would be worth it.