How to protect game ideas from being copied (facebook,iphone,android)?

[Derek]

Hi guys,

Wondered whether anyone out there has experience developing games/software and protecting it against copycats or 'clones'?

We've got a game idea that we want to launch, but have read horror stories about people who go round finding good games, copying them and them uploading them for a profit. Does anyone have any advice on how to protect a game?

At present we're trying to get it out on as many devices as possible in order to protect it, but Im guessing this still does not stop people 'cloning' it.

Currently it will be a paid app on iphone/android, but we're wondering about whether or not to make it free to play on facebook and make money off the advertising - although were concerned that if its free to play on facebook no one will bother to pay for it for iphone/android. Equally, we've heard a lot of stories about iphone games being cloned from iphone and uploaded to facebook, and wondered whether we should upload it to facebook as well as devices to prevent it from being copied...

Any advise/experience would be appreciated..

Thanks.

[Jack]

Post your question once?

[Liam]

Take out a patent?

[Endellion]

There really is no way to prevent it copycatting. If you'll look, many songs, stories, games and other forms of entertainment have similar, if not identical styling or ideas. My advice, as a consumer, is to create a Facebook game as well being that many phones (such as my own) aren't being allowed to play many new games. This is what causes the copycatting or cloning. Take The Mortal Instruments game - it's not going to be on Facebook (I've already contacted the developers) and it is only available on newer devices. So, I get to miss out. Given that many apps and games on devices link to Facebook, it's a feasible and very reasonable option and shouldn't "cut back" on the mobile device gaming and downloads.