SAFEGUARDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF GAME DESIGNERS AND DEVELOPERS: A FOCUS ON COPYRIGHT AND PATENT PROTECTION
AUTHOR – APURBA DAS, LLM SCHOLAR AT AMITY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA
BEST CITATION – APURBA DAS, SAFEGUARDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF GAME DESIGNERS AND DEVELOPERS: A FOCUS ON COPYRIGHT AND PATENT PROTECTION, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 5 (1) OF 2025, PG. 1216-1231, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
Abstract
The gaming industry has seen great development, and hence, the related issues of safeguarding Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have sprung up for game designers and game developers. This study highlights the overall importance of copyright and patent protection as the legal mechanism that reinforces creators’ rights, as well as other relevant rights, within this creative industry. Gaming also entails different illustration elements such as narratives, characters, music, and technology work, and therefore, multiple IP protection class applies: copyright, patents, and trademarks.
Protecting the rights to ownership of these properties is important in itself, but it is a basis for an environment that encourages innovation and investment. Additionally, it also ensures that developers, especially independent ones, do not have to worry about their work being infringed or plagiarized. The broader objective of this research is to deconstruct the efficiency of both copyright and patent laws, examine legal hurdles associated with an infringement of IP, and provide measures to enhance the protection of IP applied to gaming, which encompasses digital piracy and artificial intelligence-generated content.
The paper will also discuss the rise of blockchain technology and NFTs and their new opportunities for ownership verification as well as their legal problems, in particular, unauthorized tokenization of assets. IP law disparity between jurisdictions in the commission of the enforcement requires global harmonization of IP laws. In general, the future of gaming IP protection will depend on its multifaceted approach based on tight legal grounds and activity by the developers. Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright laws, Patent laws, Blockchain, NFTs, Digital Piracy, Artificial Intelligence, AI generated content.