Legal Regime for Gameplay as a Sub-element of Video Games
Vol.13,No.26(2022)
Revue pro právo a technologie
This article deals with the question of the essence of gameplay as one of the subelements of video games. In the context of numerous discussions on the topic of the legal regime of video games, the concept of gameplay has not been uniformly defined. This fact thus leaves us open several possibilities by which it can be defined and understood. The article therefore aims to analyze these possibilities and thus present relevant information on how gameplay can be regulated and protected in Czech and EU legal practice. First of all, the article touches on copyright, as probably the most discussed possibility of protecting gameplay with intellectual property rights, while all theoretical (e.g., the principle of idea-expression dichotomy) and concrete concepts (e.g., an audiovisual work) will be discussed. The article is further devoted to patent law, focusing in particular on functionality and its actual applicability for gameplay protection. The last of the three main topics is the protection of gameplay by means of commercial law, which the article portrays as protection mainly supporting the protection provided by intellectual property rights.
Video games; Gameplay; Copyright; Idea and its Expression; Patent Law; Patentability of a computer program; Legal Protection; Video game cloning; Trade Secrets and Unfair Competition
s. 5–40
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Copyright © 2022 Ondřej Böhm