[game_edu] Student IP

[Ian Schreiber]

I could see that, although "sign this statement that you won't sue us if we happen to independently develop and publish something along similar lines to your idea" is a far cry from "sign that statement that gives us full and complete IP rights to your idea and all of the code, art, music, etc. that you have created for it"...

--- On Fri, 10/10/08, Lewis Pulsipher <lewpuls at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Lewis Pulsipher <lewpuls at gmail.com>
Subject: [game_edu] Student IP
To: game_edu at igda.org
Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 9:55 AM



While I advise any prospective student to avoid any school that asserts ownership of the student's IP, which students immediately have by law for any work they create, there is a reason for a school to be cautious.  Publishers routinely require creators, who pitch a game to the publisher, to sign an agreement protecting the publisher if the publisher should later publish a game that might be construed as similar in any way.  This protects the publisher from frivolous lawsuits by game creators who don't understand that game ideas cannot be protected by copyright in any case.   (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html)   While a school doesn't publish games, there might be occasions when a student or former student would sue a school for use of his or her game for other purposes.  So the school would be wise to require students to sign a document equivalent in some ways to the document creators must sign before submitting a game/game concept to a
 publisher.  


Lewis Pulsipher, Ph.D.
Simulation and Game Development 
Fayetteville Technical Community College
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