Copyright Cheating?

[BlueMage]

I have wondered for awhile, if you copied character design from another game/anime BUT
you leave their face blank then that mean you don't violate copyright, is that true?
Well, here are 2 of example:

• Stick Z: Super Dragon Fight, +5,000,000 installs

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.os.onegame.stickwarriors

• Stick Z Bow - Super Stickman Legend, +1,000,000 installs

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=os.falcon.archer.stick.war

Even a child can easily tell those guy straightly copied DragonBall anime characters into their game.
These games are free to play however, they provide In-app Products as well put in a lots Ads,
so that mean this game should be considered as monetization games.
How could Namco / Bandai who own DragonBall series' copyright doesn't strike these guys??
+5,000,000 installs is not a joke, they're pretty popular games =O

And i don't think these games hasn't gotten in Namco/Bandai's radar, because Google/Youtube analyzes copyright content very well.
Try to upload a singer's song/ clip of a film movie on youtube, you will get copyright strike within hours

 

[CraneSoft]

The existence of these "games" just reminds me of the Flappy Bird incident in 2014.
Sometimes you just can't stop these carbon copies from flooding the market, spending the resources to get rid of them just isn't worth it because there were too many, with copyright breakers residing all across the globe.

The act of uploading copyrighted song/clips as they are and making apps/games that is directly based on popular IPs are very different things, the former being pure black (theft) while the latter in varying shades of gray (copycat). That is why alot of youtube copyrighted content are either atrocious in quality, or having the audio distorted so they would be at "the low-end of the scale for a copyright strike".

Since they are not directly stealing trademarked names or resources (character names not included), it is probably "just a case not worth fighting for", considering this is Dragon Ball we are talking about they probably had a lot of actual copyright issues to deal with, so it's likely they just didn't bother (for now).

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if they get taken down sooner or later once Namco/Bandai thinks it starts affecting their sales.

 

[Andar]

there are a number of different points at play here, but I can't tell you which one is the true reason.

1) only the copyright holder can initiate a lawsuit against the copyright breaker, because copyright is civil law.
To do this they have to pay their lawyers (especially internationally) and usually don't get anything back (unless it was a commercial copyright infringment. So they judge that based on how damaging the infringment is.
This is completely beside the fact that they usually don't even know about the infringment in most smaller cases.

2) how strong and how damaging is the copyright infringment?
What you probably don't know is that most infringements don't go directly over copyright but over trademark, as those two parts are often looked at the same. But there is a vital difference: a trademark requires a name or identity.
I didn't follow your links but from what you said they have been very carefull not to use direct names or identificable likelinesses.
And with trademark infringement avoided proving a copyright infringment is a lot more work - we're talking about months or years of lawyers work.
And at the same time if the games are different enough not to focus on the likeliness of the original IP, that reduces the damage done to the only thing the IP-Holder really cares about: the entire franchise as opposed to edits of stolen minor resources.

3) There are a few other things they could have done to reduce the chance of getting sued, but I won't put them down here.
They are not exactly legal procedures but are putting more work into the lawyer side, giving them more time to get away with the results.

 

[TheOneEyedOne]

It's difficult to say really. I guess it depends of the intention of the developer as to whether they wanted to make a fan game or a quick cash grab.

 

[BK-tdm]

It also depends on which country are you from since copyright laws vary from place to place, hence why we have a lot of knock-off games from China that step on blatant plagiarism, unless the company is really big (and even then), or from China itself, most copyright claims will be brushed aside.

Take a look here:
http://www.dorkly.com/post/79684/5-shameless-chinese-knock-off-games-that-are-kind-of-impressive

The mons one is passable due to different designs, but the Overwatch one? man those are just pallette swaps, and keep in mind Blizzard has a big market in China, check the rest of the pages... what do you mean i cant use Mario because "you created it"?.

 

[Arcmagik]

There are a lot of these games out there. Eventually they get shut down. They aren't protected from copyright violations, but most of them aren't going to get more than a C&D before any legal is taken. It seems scummy that they are just out there to rack in as much money as possible before that C&D letter comes out that shuts them down.

 

[Lonewulf123]

My advice is not to even tread these waters

 

[Woland]

Agree with Lonewulf. Plagiarism is the worst crime imaginable and it should be punished with slow and painful death.

 

[Marquise*]

@Woland I feel that way, that hard, with a difference; not to the death of the criminal but a very long community service that will occupy such a criminal so long that he'll learn to respect other's work learning its value, while having no time to steal anyone... And maybe THEN realize a few things and hopefully reform by himself instead of turning compost.

 

[Woland]

No. You would have to waste time on reforming them with zero guarantees. It takes a special kind of ******* to steal someone's work and sign his name on it. You don't just do it by accident of from any real necessity. It is always premeditated and therefore I'm physically unable to excuse it.

 

[rue669]

The example you show is obvious copyright infringement. They don't do a very good job of even hiding it. The title of the game gives it away!

I wonder if we would think the same if the hair on the Goku character was a different color or his clothes were slightly different and he had that bow and arrow? Could there be an argument that the design is changed enough that it isn't copyright infringement, but maybe it's inspired by it? How much of the original image is changed (or has to change) so that it is no longer considered copyright infringement?

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

There are a lot of these games out there. Eventually they get shut down. They aren't protected from copyright violations, but most of them aren't going to get more than a C&D before any legal is taken. It seems scummy that they are just out there to rack in as much money as possible before that C&D letter comes out that shuts them down.

Something I've been noticing is that a lot of people may be going forward with commercial projects without registering their copyright and trademark. It costs a lot of money for those who have tight budgets, but having official registration could offer extra legal options depending on the country one lives in.

In the U.S., the extra options include being able to sue for statutory damages (not to be confused with compensatory) that one surprisingly can't get by using the "poor man's copyright protection" - this is basically a "punishment fee" arbitrarily decided by the court that can go well beyond what one lost as a result of infringed sales, and is a much scarier deterrent than unregistered lawsuit damages, which are hard to gather evidence for. Ironically with a registered copyright and trademark, one might earn more from a pirate/thief screwing up than they would have with un-pirated sales. Evidence of number of sales lost is not needed for statutory damages - the judge simply says "the defendant must pay X amount to plaintiff in damages", and it could range from as little as a few hundred dollars to more than a hundred thousand dollars.

Registration won't help against every pirate/thief, but it can help reduce the number of thieves from certain countries like the United States where corporations have lobbied politicians to increase maximum legal punishments for copyright infringers.

Basically, for at least some of the pirates out there, a registered mark is like a landmine that can make them homeless in one shot.

 

[doriantoki]

It might be different country to country, but generally, once you've "created" an intellectual property, regardless of whether it is visibly on the market or not, it becomes the sole copyright of the creator. I think this is often a misunderstanding regarding copyright infringement. So long as you can prove you are the original creator, you naturally "own" copyright to the intellectual property that you've created.

One thing I am curious about, although I've only heard happen from reading articles and word of mouth, is that a lot of indie games use existing resources, but edit them either slightly, or heavily, and incorporate them into their projects. This is at times, used to save time and money, and other times intentional as a form of homage to the game that inspired it. In these cases, it's a little more grey to argue copyright infringement, especially if the source material has been obscured enough. Obviously, in the case of a design being copied, does not apply.

 

[Andar]

In these cases, it's a little more grey to argue copyright infringement, especially if the source material has been obscured enough.

No, that is not a grey area and not legal unless you get a licence for the unedited original including the ability to edit it.

Editing something creates an additional copyright, it does NOT remove the original copyright. If you take a resource and edit it (assuming you have obtained the right to edit) then you create a shared copyright - you hold the copyright on the edit but the original artist still retains the copyright of those parts not edited. You do not get sole copyright of something by editing it, no matter how much you change it.
That is a misconception of people who misunderstood the background of the requirement to create a new work - those rules only apply to get you an additional copyright based on your own added work.

That said, there are a lot of cases where resources are sold with the licence to edit them - the RPG-Makers are the best example for this, because you get the RTP-resources with the licence to edit them to fit your game, and even redistribute them as long as the terms of the licence are followed - which basically means that the edit can only be used in an RM-engine, not in other engines, and it may not be sold as a resource (only used in a game done with an RM). That is why you can post RTP-Edits here in the forums resource sections for others to use.

If you don't edit or trace something but use it as a guideline to create something similiar but on your own work, then you have the complete copyright on it. But there is one little known fact about it: this only counts for copyright, not for trademark. And that is where naming becomes important.
The naming is the difference between a legal "inspired by" and an illegal trademark infringement.
The original post gave legal examples of "inspired by" because in those cases they were always named differently.
All fangames are automatically trademark infringments and illegal because they use the name of the original games directly instead of giving them different names.

 

[doriantoki]

@Andar

I guess what I was indicating is that some content creators will take existing assets as they exist and edit over them. This is typically the case for pixel artwork, such as the FFVI style sprite edits being widely circulated. In this sense, whether they do it intentionally knowing they're obstructing copyright or not, it's grey in that it's pretty difficult to claim it's a "rip-off" of the original, or whether it's heavily influenced. Technically yes, it's a copyright infringement, but this is not always easy to prove.