Finally, thanks for the plug for my GameDevKit!

And… is it really have to have a notary public? If so… then I presume not a single contract with major publishers is valid – as we have always scanned papers and sent them?

You can not own what you do not own. So, getting the ownership of the ip contributions of all assset contributors is the essential first step.

DS

That said, in addition to googling for your company/game name, I’d highly recommend going to the USPTO website (http://www.uspto.gov), and clicking on the Search button under the Trademarks menu-item on the left-hand side of the page. You can then type in whatever name you had in mind, and see if someone’s already registered it. Also try alternate spellings for your name, as if there are any preexisting trademarks too similar to yours then your (future) trademark application will be denied. Similarity in this sense is primarily the pronunciation of your mark – for example, if there was a preexisting trademark registered in the Electronic Games space (or whatever they call it) called “CoolGame”, then you could NOT register “Kewl Game” because it would likely be pronounced similarly.

My understanding, based on listening to my wife babble on about her studies, is that your trademark is not valid until it has been used in interstate commerce. I believe there is a small window for this (basically you need to use your mark commercially within a year or two of its issuance), so you should ideally register the mark shortly before you plan on going live and selling your game.

On the topic of getting the rights to all work that’s going into your game, you should ideally pay the contributors something up-front for their work, even if it’s a pittance. And stipulate this in a (paper) contract, signed by both parties specifically identifying any work they provide as “work for hire”. This means that they are an employee of yourself, and that you own the copyright to anything they do. Of course you can follow some other convention if you’d like – giving the copyright to your Company, or relinquishing the right to all works in the event that the game isn’t published, or whatever else you want – but make sure you have it specifically worded in your contract. And keep in mind that if your payment for this work-for-hire is future royalties, you MUST pay them something in the future or else the contract becomes invalid. (And you cannot contractually give away something for nothing, so you MUST give them at least SOMETHING in exchange for their work, in order to receive the copyright to it.)

Again, this is only myself speaking as a layperson, not a trained lawyer. If you have concerns about such things, and especially if you believe you have a chance to “make it big”, you asbolutely should have your own attorney.

Fax or send scanned copy to sign up… or agree via email. Both are ok.

EDIT: Different countries have different laws. I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot tell how it will work. It’s best to get everything written on paper to make it legally binding.