One Hour One Life Forums

This is exactly the kind of game it is intended to be. This is exactly the experience the game's creator wants you to have.

It's why the name of the game is "ONE Life". You get one life, and you get one hour to live that life, and that's all you get. It's up to you to make the most of it. You depend on the people who lived before you to build a good civilization for you to live in, just as the people who will come after you are depending on you to take good care of it and make it better than you found it.

Because, you see, that's exactly what life is like in the real world. You get ONE life. OHOL compresses the experience of living your actual, real world life - your one and only life - into a game you can play in an hour.

And then, if you choose, you can do it again. That's the one advantage to this game that you can't do in real life, unless you believe in reincarnation. But every playthrough is supposed to be a fresh start, with no relationships to build with any players except the ones you meet in your current life, and those relationships will die when you do. Just like in the real world.

"Let's start a facebook group!"

"There already is one, nobody uses it."

"Let's start another one!"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm somewhat familiar with the libertarian case against copyrights and patents; I'm rather libertarian myself, at times even radically so. I haven't read Kinsella's book but I've read the occasional article by him and others on the topic.

I'm ambivalent on it myself. I'm not convinced that copyrights and patents are natural rights (which are the only kind that many of us libertarians recognize!), but at the same time I don't see them as particularly offensive, and do see that they have the potential of providing a great deal of value to mankind by incentivizing creation and innovation.

One note, which doesn't necessarily undercut your points: copyright doesn't control what you can do with your own ink and paper; it controls what you can distribute, i.e. it's a restraint on commerce (or non-commercial trade), not specifically on personal actions and personal property.

I'm not crazy about the modern-era trend of extending copyright periods. I think that's been a particularly egregious bit of rent-seeking and that the periods have been extended far beyond what can be supported by arguments about creating incentives for creativity.

Cool stuff!

I'd be interested to see similar graphs at 5+ and 15+ generations.

It's true that dilution claims can only be brought if the mark is famous. Fame here is not relative or local; it must be nationwide.

However, while dilution claims are reserved for famous marks, the normal trademark claim is available to any mark owner: likelihood of confusion as to the origin of the product. And while "separate channels of trade" is a defense, it's just one factor. Similarity of marks is another factor, as is distinctiveness of marks. So if my pizza logo is very distinctive, and you used the exact same logo for your mufflers, then I would probably prevail in court, even though my mark is not famous.

... I think.

I haven't found a high-quality source that confirms that, but here's an offhand comment from someone who sounds like they have at least a little knowledge:

Now, normal trademark claims like this do have some local considerations, but only with respect to priority of use. If you are the first to use a mark in an area and the mark is not yet registered, then you have priority of use in that area. If you are the first to register a mark, then you have priority of use nationwide, except in any area where someone already has an established use of that mark. But if someone else has a registered mark, you cannot start to use that mark in any area where you were not already using it before the mark was registered.

So two pizza shops in two different states can use the exact same name and logo unless one of them not only used it but registered it, and did so before the other one started using it.

I happen to know of one which I greatly enjoy (and have contributed to in small ways): Zero-K. It's an open-source RTS that's a direct descendant of Total Annihilation (and even predates Supreme Commander!).

The game is distributed via Steam as a free game (as well as directly from the Zero-K website) and is developed entirely by a community of volunteers, so unlike OHOL nobody is making any money from it. The game code is all GPL. The content comes from a variety of sources with licenses such as public domain, MIT, GPL, and CC-BY or similar.

The game was distributed entirely through the website for many years, but a few years ago the developers got it onto Steam, first through Greenlight as a work-in-progress and then eventually as an official release.

The game is free both as in freedom and beer, and unlike most free games on Steam it's not "free to play", it's just free, as in "actually free". There's no ads, no in-app purchases, no premium content. You can use Steam to make a donation which helps pay for the servers, and that gives you a custom avatar as a thank-you for donors.

It would be difficult for someone to "make a quick buck" off of cloning Zero-K because they can't undercut the price of free. They'd also have to pull some of the content that was CC-BY-NC but that isn't much. They'd also have to stand up new infrastructure - which they could do, because all the infrastructure code is also open-source and is in github but it would be a gigantic pain in the ass. And they'd have to build a community of players, because it's primarily an online game (although it can be played single-player against AIs and there is a single-player campaign). So copycatting isn't really an issue for this game.

My guess is that the only open-source for-pay games on Steam are yours.

Thanks for your vote of confidence! But I don't know the answer, and I know that the answer likely depends on a number of factors (including factors I don't know about), and I politely decline to do the substantial research that would be required to make my opinion at all relevant.

I like spouting off as much as the next guy, and I actually enjoy reading and learning about this kind of stuff, but I know enough about it to know that a meaningful answer would require more reading and learning than I have time and curiosity for.

This is why people who can actually answer that question get paid to answer such questions.

As I mentioned previously...

The rule is not "within the same industry", although that's a useful guideline. The rule is "tends to confuse the public as to the origin of the product".

A set of three colors is not "a color scheme". A color scheme is the use of a set of colors in a particular way so as to create a distinctive appearance and style. Distinctive appearances and styles can be trademarked.

So, no. No one can own the colors red, yellow, and white. But McDonald's owns their color scheme, which uses the colors red, yellow, and white. You too can use the colors red, yellow, and white, but not in the distinctive way in which McDonald's does.

... accordingly, it occurs to me that it would probably be in your best interest to draft a more formal agreement with Dual Decade regarding the use of your trademarks. That agreement should probably take the form of a contract. A contract necessarily requires the explict exchange of considerations, which means that you would have to give them something (a license grant) and they would have to give you something (something more than merely goodwill; for example, say, a sum of money).

This would help ensure that DD's use of the trademarks could not be used by someone else as an argument towards the genericization of those marks. Your current non-contractual agreement with them regarding their use of your trademarks wouldn't be as much help, and in fact might even undermine your efforts to assert your mark ownership due to the language you used in that email.

I think you could still find a solution with DD that would keep the tie to your game (and thus continue to help you financially) AND keep it clear - as clear as it can be to a general population who by and large are disinterested in such matters - that the mobile game and your game are distinct and divergent AND do so in a way that doesn't significantly impact DD's plans to produce and market a wildly successful mobile game in various foreign markets AND that both you and they would be comfortable with.

I think most of the issues on both sides have been raised and discussed sufficiently that now, by stepping back for a bit, the entire situation can be reappraised with clear and calm minds. And perhaps that reappraisal will reveal a better solution than the current path.

Jason has a trademark in anything which is being used to uniquely identify his product and its origin (origin here meaning "made by Jason" as opposed to "made by someone else"). Any use of any of those trademarks by someone else's product which would tend to confuse consumers as to the origin of that product - i.e. that might lead a consumer to think that the other person's product was actually Jason's product - would infringe on Jason's trademark rights.

(Technically, since Jason's product is a service, the marks are service marks rather than trademarks, but they basically work the same way.)

The art and audio are in the public domain and can be used by anyone for anything. But if they are used in a way that might lead to confusion as to the origin of a product, then that use might be infringing. So, for example, a competing multiplayer service could use all of Jason's art and audio in their game, but could not use it in advertising their game in the same or similar way that Jason uses it to advertise his game.

There's some interesting questions around all of this:

• How specific would Jason's use of his artwork have to be in order to be protected as a trademark? If Jason's advertising and promotion of his game uses particular pieces of artwork, but doesn't use other particular pieces of artwork, could a competing game use those other pieces in their advertising and promotion of their game?

• Does Jason's use of his artwork within the game constitute "trade dress", and if so, would the use of the same artwork (or even a similar art style!) in a competing game infringe on that trade dress? Maybe yes, if the game itself is considered part of its own appearance "in commerce". Maybe no, if the in-game appearance of the game is not presented to the public, for example, in its advertising and marketing and points-of-sale. Would it make a difference if the game were cast on youtube? Would it make a difference if those youtube casts were done by people with no connection to the game's producers?

• If Jason's product is actually his service, and if his code and artwork are public domain, could someone sell a modified client using his trademarks? Or would the distinction between a piece of client software (a product) and the ability to connect a client to a server (a service) be sufficiently poorly-understood so as to nevertheless lead to confusion between the two in the minds of consumers?

Remember that the key factor in determining whether or not a trademark right exists is whether the mark is being used in commerce. Jason could assert a trademark right over every piece of art and audio, but if the other party can show that they are not being used in commerce to uniquely identify the product then Jason may not be able to prevail if it came to a lawsuit.

I think that's a great improvement over the various statements you've made to date. It makes your intent clear and preserves any legal rights you may have other than the specific ones you want to disclaim.

As you've mentioned elsewhere, retaining your trademarks places a pretty large restriction on what people can do with the artwork which you intended to place in the public domain. But I think that restriction is precisely what you have been wanting, and perhaps what you were expecting you were owed even without depending on trademark law.

It's conceivable that you may have already lost your trademarks. You may have granted a license to those trademarks when you stated the following in an email to Dual Decade:

It's conceivable you granted the same license to those trademarks to everyone when you published that email in your original thread. And it's conceivable that that license, once granted, is irrevocable.

I say "conceivable" here because whether it is or isn't, including whether said grant was subject to conditions that Dual Decade broke, would ultimately have to be determined by a court hearing. In my completely amateur opinion I think Dual Decade would have a strong case that you granted them a license, a strong case that the license was irrevocable, and a strong case that they have not broken any conditions that may have been attached to that grant. I'm not particularly confident in that opinion because I know that trademark law has a number of important and complicated factors that I do not know enough about (it's important to know that there are things one doesn't know).

The good news is that Dual Decade is still, and has been all along, trying to live up to much more than just their legal obligations, but instead are trying to adhere to the "whatever makes Jason happy" license. You should be glad that they are.

It's good that you've spent some time to clarify your intent, your requirements, your rights, and your disclaimer of some of those specific rights. Kudos. I think it's well-written; it's concise and easy to understand.

(Edit: I see you do agree that you granted them a license. I'm glad to see that; I hadn't seen those posts when I first wrote this one.)