Game development Insanity - help!

[GameDev]

Posting from North Carolina, with a working partner in Louisiana (lol yeah Louisiana Civil Law yikes)

Ok Im going to tell my story in hopes that someone can answer my question.

A friend and I (both in our 30s - sad huh?) who play an online game were talking one day. I told him that I was going to attend game-creation school in 6 months. It turns out he's getting a computer science degree and asked me what kind of game I wanted to make. I told him a post-apocalyptic MMORPG FPS, kind of like the RPG Fallout.

We began a partnership to create the game. (I should point out that we had no actual partnership agreement, other than a few conversations that we were working on stuff together) He worked on code, and I began work on the website, getting more people to join the project, developing a list of weapons and skills and other stuff. He got a friend to contribute some writing work to the project as well.

He started getting bossy and saying he was going to be the lead of the project. I told him we should be equals and friends could do this as a partnership. Well that got him angry and he left the partnership.

Now he's threatening me saying it was entirely his concept (which ISNT the case at all) and I need to stop my team from working any more on this project.

He did have a previous project with a slightly similar theme, but so did I. I was the one who outlined in our talks what I wanted FIRST, then he comes and says it was all his. I developed more of the core idea of the game myself, but he references a post on the internet from a year ago where he was starting something similar.
I had a similar idea over a year ago myself but never posted anything anywhere.

So does anyone know how copyright law works in this case?

My work is not derivative from his. We both had ideas that we contributed to the project, so I dont think the derivative rules apply.

His former post was merely for a FORMAT (Multi-player Online game, First person perspective) which is vague and that process cant be owned. Furthermore the theme of his project "post-apocalyptic" is general and has been the subject of many movies, games, and books as a general theme.

What about all ideas contributed to the project - do they stay as part of the project?

Man Im really angry about this backstabbing and need some help.

Thanks in advance

 

[divgradcurl]

Looks like a pretty complicated issue, but here's two points that might simplify things for you:

First, if you both brought ideas to the table to create a game, then most likely the copyright in the game is held by both of you -- there may be facts not here that would end up showing differently, but generally in a collaborative work where there is no contractual division of copyright ownership in place, each contributor is a co-owner of the copyright. However, each co-owner owns ALL of the rights -- which means that either of you could license the work to another, sell the work to another, or create your own derivative works, WITHOUT gettings the other's input. However, any profits or licensing fees generated would have to be split between the owners.

So, he can take the work and continue creating a game, and you can't stop him. But, then again, he can't stop YOU from continuing to work on your own game.

Second, you guys are in different states. If he wants to sue you for anything, he has to come to your state and hire an attorney in your state to do anything. Unless there is a lot of $$$ involved, it may not be worth it for him to go any further than the threatening letters.

In any case, if you are really concerned, it would be prudent to take all of the facts and go talk to an attorney who is experienced in copyright to figure out who owns what. In general though, co-contributors co-own a copyright in any work they create together and can each continue to work independently to create their own personal derivative works from the original.

 

[divgradcurl]

One more thing -- if he wrote all of the code himself, and you simply collaborated on the concepts and game mechanics, then he would likely be found to own the copyright to the code itself on his own, but the parts that you did collaborate on -- design elements, concept, game mechanics, etc. -- would be co-owned.