Apparently Square Enix is suing several stores for selling unlicensed replicas of swords from Final Fantasy. I am surprised regarding whether or not the design of a sword is actually covered by trademark, the law in this area can be a tricky thing.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/square-enix-sue.html
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3 comments:
I'm guessing weapons, artifacts, power-ups, etc. can have so much of their own personality that the game can be identified by them.
There was this issue on character copyright:
http://gamepolitics.com/2008/03/14/report-chinas-official-olympics-website-rips-off-games/
It seems characters are more recognizable copyrighted material, and items in the game world fall into the background until something like the sword replicas crops up.
Then again, a character in one of the Arc the Lad games very much resembled a combination of Sephiroth and Cloud, but I'm not sure if anything was brought up about that. Maybe it's different with anime-style art, or maybe it's just my imagination.
Pic:
http://www.rpgdreamer.com/arc/arc3/velhart.html
It always seems like the large companies with their own, dedicated legal departments care about these things.
Most AAA game developers have a dedicated Weapons department. They cannot use the real-life weapons in game (if they do they have to pay the original weapon manufacturer ie., counter-strike uses all real weapons but have different names that don't exist). So when the game companies design their own weapons they expect the same - royalties!
I always see those LOTR sword replicas in print ads on in-flight shopping brochures, I think they are all licensed.
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