Liscensing/Copyright?

[MisterN]

I was wondering if there is more than one way of liscensing/copyrighting my game than to spend $60 for something. I heard that I can use a liscense like z-lib or something (im not even sure that exists). Do you know of any way/place I can get my game liscensed in a way so I would own all of the contents but if I were to release it for free at some point it would still be mine? Thanks

[josebita]

You don't have to do anything: once you create a game, that game is yours and you can license it in any way you can. Copyright is completely yours (unless you live in a country without copyright, but you probably don't) for the mere act of having created your game.
Therefore, you can put it in a box and sell it in a store or give it for free under any open source license, like the zlib, or whatever.

[Edit] You probably clicked on "New Poll" instead of in "New Topic"

[BlackCurtain]

In order to legally protect your work from copyright infringement you have to get a patent at the patent office, but those are quite expensive if you are to gain a wordwide patent.

[josebita]

In order to legally protect your work from copyright infringement you have to get a patent at the patent office, but those are quite expensive if you are to gain a wordwide patent.

No you don't. Patents are for registering innovations and getting a legal monopoly on that particular innovation.
As I said, copyright of a work is assigned to you by the mere fact of having created that work. If you find a copyright violation, you can ask the person to stop it (in some countries there are regulated meassures for this, like a DMCA takedown notice in the US) or directly go to court.

If you want to register your work's name, you must go to your local trademark office. But that only gives you a legal monopoly over the name.

There are systems for registering your work before any violation happens so that latter it's much easier to prove that the you are, in fact, the legal copyright holder as you were the original author.

[BlackCurtain]

I don't think I quite understood his question so I just posted what I knew.
You still have to have proof that you are the original creator of the work and you have to be able to prove at what date/year you made it. Else just anybody can come up and say that someone has violated their copyright.

[josebita]

Well, the question wasn't clear at all. Maybe you can clarify, DoctorN.