• moody@lemmings.world
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    3 months ago

    This only applies to trademarks and the risk of genericization. You don’t lose copyrights that way.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Which is why I’m surprised most video game characters are generic humans these days.

      Seems like it’s easier to protect a trademark on Banjo and Kazooie than it is for John McWhiteguy from Call of Duty.

    • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Can you help me with this? My reading says different:

      What is Intellectual Property?

      There are four types of intellectual property:

      • A trademark is a name, logo, symbol, slogan, or tagline – or in some limited cases, even a shape, color, or sound – that is used to identify and distinguish goods or services of one person or company from those of another.
      • A patent is a right granted by the federal government to the patent owner that permits the owner to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited time period (for example, up to 20 years).
      • A copyright grants the owner the exclusive right to publish, reproduce, print, perform, display, license, film or record their literary, artistic, or musical content, and prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work.
      • A trade secret is highly confidential proprietary information, such as a device, method, technique, process, formula, or program, that has undergone reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy because it provides significant economic value in not being known or readily discoverable by others

      link

      Wouldn’t the bolded ‘trade secret’ section cover their switch’s defense against its emulators?

      Then, the requirement to defend:

      For Good Reason: “Reasonable Measures” in Recent Trade Secret Law

      One often-overlooked requirement has the potential to make or break a trade secret misappropriation claim: the trade secret owner must have taken “reasonable measures” to protect the trade secret; otherwise the information does not qualify as trade secret under the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) or the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”). But the statute does not provide what protective measures are sufficiently reasonable, so that determination largely depends on each case’s facts and circumstances. This article examines recent case law surrounding what measures courts have found to be “reasonable” under the circumstances (and which ones courts have found were not “reasonable” under the circumstances).

      link

      • moody@lemmings.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s certainly possible, but AFAIK their objections have been about piracy and copyright infringement. At least I haven’t read or heard anything about trade secrets being at issue.

    • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      From my understanding of Japanese law (lol super duper limited), it actually is the case specifically in Japan that they could lose their older IPs, however if they are still in use (banjo kazooie just got a new game in the last few years, right?) then THOSE IPs are safe in terms of maintaining ownership.

      In my opinion that’s just bullshit, but I do understand the reasoning.

      However, if an IP has been abandoned, and no new games are planned, it should be completely fair game.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The “actively using” part is my conspiracy theory on why Disney has recently made so many live action remakes. They need to be able to show that they’re still using their copyrights and trademarks, so they’re just rehashing all of their old movies as live action. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s good, because the company is just trying to maintain their IP holdings.

        Similar to why they added Steamboat Mickey to their intro. They wanted to show that they were still using it, so they just slapped it in as part of their intro. The only reason that fell through was because they failed to bribe enough lawmakers soon enough, and missed the deadline to vote to extend copyrights.

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          I always just assumed the Live Action movies were a money laundering scheme.

          Outside of Aladdin which people only saw because “Will Smith genie memes!”, did any of them even make money at the box office?

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        The last time Banjo Kazooie had a new game, I was still a man.

        That ship has long since fucking sailed, I’m post-op and everything.