Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York
I wanto to make my own custom version of a board game online, I've tried asking the authors for permission but they ignored me so I'd like to know how much would I need to change the game for it to be considered my own version and legal. The game itself is pretty simple, a set of rules some unique cards with artwork and names, would creating my own unique artwork and changing the names be considered as my game and legally safe for me to do?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Creating derivative work is a tricky area in Copyright law. There is no bright line rule beyond which derivative work could be considered its own new copyrighted work. Rather, the transformation, modification or adaptation of the original work must be substantial to be original to be protected as a new work.
Therefore, close cooperation with legal counsel could shed a lot of light on what you can and cannot do when creating your own custom version of the game and this would be based on research of prior cases involving derivative that successfully transformed into its own new work.
If you need help with this please ping me offline.
Roman R. Fichman, Esq.
www.TheLegalists.com │ @TheLegalist
email: Info (@) TheLegalists (dot) com
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