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Jesusfreak wrote:Like the Nazi Zombies in CoD? What if your MMO turns out to be really successful and the makers of CoD found out you stole their idea?

Ideas cannot be copyrighted, so they would not be able to do anything. Now, if he used the same character names, and other specifics from CoD, then you could have a problem. But just the idea of Nazi zombies cannot be protected. Hell, CoD was not the first to have Nazi zombies. I think the idea started in propaganda comic books during the 1940s.

Mmm JackoLantern is idea's cant be copyrighted. Also if your referring to the zombies in cod: world at war. Well if idea's could by copyrighted they could be sued by the Call of Duty 4 Zombie Mod teams . Because it was there idea first. And I am sure there were others mods before them.

Jack is right I have seen some of the old comics about nazi zombies, not in person, in the net and in books. They were very gruesome for their time. Hmm maybe I should make mexican zombies and copyright that or Alaskan Zombies!!

hallsofvallhalla wrote:Jack is right I have seen some of the old comics about nazi zombies, not in person, in the net and in books. They were very gruesome for their time. Hmm maybe I should make mexican zombies and copyright that or Alaskan Zombies!!

I think about zombies nearly 24/7. Believe me, if you could copyright "zombie <blank>" I would probably have over half of the possible choices

Maybe a trademark is in order? Or is zombie <blank> to generic?

Hmm what about Zombie Blank! Where everything is destroyed by Zombies!!! Would be a kewl name for a game

Noctrine wrote:Maybe a trademark is in order? Or is zombie <blank> to generic?

It is too generic to be copyrighted. Plus, a trademark is only used to protect a logo, a name of a product, or a specific branding slogan. They are designed to keep people from attempting to use your branding to confuse consumers into buying their products. A well-known example is the "Nike swish" logo (the arched line they use on all their shoes). Because it is trademarked, you could get in serious legal trouble if you tried putting that same logo on a jacket, because you could be guilty of attempting to mislead customers into believing it was a Nike jacket. Here is an example of some famous trademarks. Note that trademarks are only used in trade, which require physical (or data) goods. For any kind of service (such as a plumber's logo), you would use the sister of the trademark, a "servicemark". Note that although MMORPGs are a combination of a product and a service, they typically use Trademarks.

some good info there, thanks