Canadian Startup and Video Game Law Blog
Startup and video game law, from a Canadian and U.S. perspective
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Importance of a Trademark Search
Our clients spend an immense amount of time building their business, from product development, to names and branding. In this whirlwind of creation, we often encounter businesses that forgot to see if their product or business name is available for trademark. This is a problem that also arises with third party creative agencies, who have...
Expedited Trademark Examinations in Canada
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) recently announced that it will be accepting requests for expedited examination of trademark applications along with other measures to speed up the trademark registration process in Canada. Before the recent announcements, CIPO took approximately 24-30 months to issue an examiner’s report (also called an office action). The new measures...
Intellectual Property Rights for Video Game Studios
For our video game clients, protecting intellectual property is an important part of their business. Intellectual property protection for a video game commonly comes in the form of trademark and copyright but may also involve patents and trade secrets Trademarks can protect the titles and logos associated with a game. Without a registered trademark, another studio could...
Real World Items in Games
When creating realistic video games, developers often desire to render real-world items digitally but neglect considering rights held in these items. A failure to investigate rights held in real-world items is not limited to smaller studios as major developers (ex. Activision) have been sued for using real-world items in their games, such as AM General’s Hummer...