So when the game was hosted by CoG will it receive trademark/copyright? I am not good with legal stuff so I ask.
With Hosted Games, authors retain the rights to the game and story. We can’t release the work published through Hosted Games anywhere else, but can create derivative works at our leisure, and are even able to tell the same story if it is in a sufficiently different form (so it doesn’t compete with the product sold by Hosted Games). There’s details there I’m omitting to avoid getting too much into the contracts.
With Choice of Games titles, there is an option for either selling the work and the rights to CoG for a lump sum, or retain the rights and license it to them for publishing.
According to the Berne Convention copyrights for all written works belong automatically to the author and don’t require a specific registration for one to be claimed. It doesn’t even need any legalese-sounding texts printed with the written work to be in effect. Registration is voluntary, but strengthens the claim in case of infringement.
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Thank you for reply.