legal question: license

[GameDevCn]

Recently I've got some ideas about making a game related to Formula 1. Of course I can not afford the license fee. Is there a way to legally use the name "Formula 1"/"F1", the team names, driver names and so on without license, to do business?

AFAIK, I can*not* sell/provide "commercial" products/services without related license. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What if I make the product/service "free", and make money by other means?
What means are legal?

Any comment is welcomed.

EDIT:
typo: the 2nd paragraph: added a "not" after "can". Sorry for the mistake.

[GameDevCn]

1xx views, no reply?

Thanks for any comment.

[Jim Buck]

My guess is that F1 could sue if they wanted to. Especially if you are using drivers' and teams' names.

[1EyedJack]

You can not use real driver/team-names without having a license, and the same goes for "Formula 1" and "F1". You could however use "fake"-names in your game and then offer a free patch that gives the drivers/teams the real names. But I think that you can not publish this kind of patch on your own games official website (not 100% sure about this). This technique is used in many games that don't have a license (for example Pro Evolution Soccer).
Or you could just have an editor in your game, so that the users can change names of teams and drivers.

[Ricardo C]

Recently I've got some ideas about making a game related to Formula 1. Of course I can not afford the license fee. Is there a way to legally use the name "Formula 1"/"F1", the team names, driver names and so on without license, to do business?

AFAIK, I can sell/provide "commercial" products/services without related license. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What if I make the product/service "free", and make money by other means?
What means are legal?

Any comment is welcomed.

Disclaimer: I am not a laywer, which is why I hadn't replied to this originally. Take my thoughts with a huge gerain of salt.

A while ago, in the Quake 1 days, several companies tried to capitalize on Doom and Quake's popularity by selling unauthorized expansion packs, simply taking user-made levels from the net and throwing them on a CD. id was not amused, and sued, and publically lambasted the practice. I'm not sure if the lawsuit succeeded, but it shows you can and will get sued if the owner of the property decides you're negatively affecting his product, or exploiting a loophole in order to profit.

Last year, several Hollywood studios managed to shut down dvdecoverart.net, a non-proft site that provided custom DVD covers for commercial films, using alternate poster art, or user-created art. They charged for downloads, as a means of keeping the site going. But to the studios it looked like they were profiting from their properties, and threatened the site till it went away.

So if you're thinking of something like giving away a F1 game and then making money through player guides or memorabilia bearing your game's name, I don't think it can even be said you "could be" in trouble, you'd be neck-deep in shit from the word go.

[gmcbay]

You would certainly get in trouble for doing this, no matter if your game or product was free or not.

Companies like EA pay big money to the various commercial sports organizations to legally license the names, trademarks, etc. They won't be happy to see that someone else is using that property for free, and it won't take long for word to get back to F1's and the various race team's lawyers, who will come down on you like a ton of bricks, especially on the trademark issue. If they didn't come after you, they could (potentially) lose their trademarks and thus the licensing money they make from the big publishers.

[Daire Quinlan]

Or you could just have an editor in your game, so that the users can change names of teams and drivers.

This could also get you into trouble if the F1 legal team were sufficently aggressive. Marvel sued the makers of City of Heroes for merely allowing the customer to create a character that might -resemble- one of their copyrighted characters ie yellow and black suit, spiky hair, claws ... Bing ! lawsuit ! The F1 crowd already make money from licensing the f1 brand to computer game producers so they'd like as not chase this one down allright.

D.

[Nauris]

I doubt you can even use F1 in your title. Formula1 is a business and I think unauthorized use of F1 will get you quickly pulled off the road.

[cliffski]

nothing to stop you doing a racing game. as far as I know even american lawyers dont think anyone has copyrighted the concept of things moving on wheels (only a matter of time though).
Who cares if its not called formula 1?

[GBGames]

However Sega has claims to a patent on the algorithms to make characters run out of the way of vehicles.

[Greg Squire]

My advice is don't do it! You could easily get sued over something like this; use fake-names instead. Perhaps you could use names that are a parody of the real ones, but still tread lightly here, as there's a fine line between "parody" and "trademark infringement". If you have your heart set on using the real names you could always ask for permission (in writing) to use them. Most likely the answer would be "No" or "sure, if you give us lots of money", but at least you have tried.

[mahlzeit]

However Sega has claims to a patent on the algorithms to make characters run out of the way of vehicles.
Don't know if you're joking or not, but even if they did it doesn't make any difference as long as you use a different algorithm. :)

[GameDevCn]

Thank you all for your comments. They are all very helpful.

Two more questions:
(Here I use F1 as example. They may be changed to other trademark such as NBA.)

1) There are many websites (fan sites) about F1. Suggest there is a non-commercial fan site about F1. The webmaster gathers information about F1 and puts them on the site to serve the audiences, for free. At the same time, he put something like "Make a donation", "Support the site", etc. on his site. Is that legal? Can he be sued if by this means he earns (lots of) money? What if the site is not dedicated on F1, but a comprehensive news site (reporting various news including F1's, still non-commercial) and the webmaster gets (lots of) donation for the website?

2) There are lots of commercial news providers, such as CNN. They report F1 news by using real name of F1 (the game), teams and drivers. I guess none of them have a license for "reporting F1 news" from F1 organization. (As I know, they may need license for broadcasting whole matches. But here I'm talking about their reporting of something like "new match starts", "somebody wins certain match", and so on.) They earn money from those F1 news. As I know, they are not sued. What makes the difference? Is it because the news are also carrying free advertisment? Is it because F1 organization allow them to do so?

BTW, I made a big mistake in my first post. I forgot to type a "not". :eek: It has been corrected. Sorry for that.

Thank you for reading and look forward to comments.

EDIT: grammar

[Ricardo C]

1) There are many websites (fan sites) about F1. Suggest there is a non-commercial fan site about F1. The webmaster gathers information about F1 and puts them on the site to serve the audiences, for free. At the same time, he put something like "Make a donation", "Support the site", etc. on his site. Is that legal? Can he be sued if by this means he earns (lots of) money? What if the site is not dedicated on F1, but a comprehensive news site (reporting various news including F1's, still non-commercial) and the webmaster gets (lots of) donation for the website?

This ties into my DVD Cover Art example earlier. They charged for download credits, not asd a means to profit, but simply to cover bandwidth costs (each hi-res printable cover was about 4MB zipped). But to the studios, that didn't matter. They saw the site as doing business on the back of their IP, and fought it. If a site such as the one you describe could be proven to be turning a profit through donations, it could certainly be sued. And it would likely lose.

2) There are lots of commercial news providers, such as CNN. They report F1 news by using real name of F1 (the game), teams and drivers. I guess none of them have a license for "reporting F1 news" from F1 organization. (As I know, they may need license for broadcasting whole matches. But here I'm talking about their reporting of something like "new match starts", "somebody wins certain match", and so on.) They earn money from those F1 news. As I know, they are not sued. What makes the difference? Is it because the news are also carrying free advertisment? Is it because F1 organization allow them to do so?

Newsworthiness.

If I may be so blunt: Just create your own property, it's easier than thinking of possible ways to circumvent copyright law ;)

[GameDevCn]

Thank you very much.