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Legal Issues

This thread is a few years old. Some details may refer to an earlier version of Visionaire Studio. Current tutorials

  • #1, by LupaShiva 10 years ago Quote
    Hello everyone, im creating a serie of small games where you talk with well known personalities or fictional characters that already exist, my question is, does i have legal issues with it? I give an example, i want to introduce in a game, a version of Dolly Parton, can i do it? Even if i change her name to something similar? Im not sure if i can do it.

    Thank you
    LupaShiva
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  • #2, by sebastian 10 years ago Quote
    im not sure how persons of public life are handled in your country. But mostly slightly changed names will do the trick... But ik no lawyer :p
  • #3, by Nigec 10 years ago Quote
    I think it depends on if there's also a brand, I mean Alice Cooper would be a no no.. even he screwed up and still has to pay royalies to the original band members.. originally Alice Cooper was the band

    To be honest it depends on how much of a dick they are, historical figures are usually ok, if its a free game it'll probably pass un noticed

    Changing the name is usually funner anyway wink

  • #4, by LupaShiva 10 years ago Quote
    Hum... ok =) i suppose ill go for the changing name point of view =) it will actually be fun =P

    Thank you
  • #5, by bobby23 10 years ago Quote
    Change the names and include a legal statement at the beginning saying that similarities with real people are coincidental , etc. 
  • #6, by LupaShiva 10 years ago Quote
    "similarities with real people are coincidental" thats a nice trick =) ill problably use it.

    Thank you
  • #7, by afrlme 10 years ago Quote
    "similarities with real people are coincidental" thats a nice trick =) ill problably use it.

    Thank you
    Should technically be something like: "Any similarities to living, dead or fictional characters, names or locations is purely coincidental."

    Quick note: this doesn't really protect you from anything, but if you take someone elses work, say the name of a character that someone else created & change the name of the character slightly & maybe a few features here & there of the way the character looks, then you can turn around & say I created this, regardless of whether or not you blatantly ripped it off someone else & did the equivalent of asset flipping (where people take existing data & stick it straight into their media content with or without modifying it).
  • #8, by LupaShiva 10 years ago Quote
    Actually all the artwork would be created by me, i suppose changing the name, adding "Any similarities to living, dead or fictional characters, names or locations is purely coincidental." would do the trick, at least i expect so =)

    Thank you all for the help