Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

Re: Developing Free Online Games

Of course, if you don't protect your creative contribution to the games. There are ways to do that, the easiest of which is to enter into an appropriate agreement with anyone you disclose the games to.

Re: Developing Free Online Games

You really have two things to consider: (1.) the games themselves, as you have identified in your question; and (2.) the "method" of attracting people to your search engines through the use of those games (i.e., a potential "business method" patent infringement scenario.) The long answer here is to consult with an experienced IP attorney so that you gain the advantage of having conducted "due diligence" searches of whatever might be out there ahead of you - copyrights, patents, trademarks. Once you have made a reasonable effort at due diligence, you will probably be sufficiently covered. The short answer is that you probably don't have a lot to worry about unless/until you copy someone else's work - be that in the form of a game or in the form of how the game is used (i.e., to attract people to your search engine). Note here that just because you use original elements, this is no automatic guarantee that you still will not end up infringing someone's copyright. Remember, copyright infringement occurs when you substantially mimic the copyright holder's "expression" - and so the elements that you use to comprise your work of "expression" is quite secondary. A truly horrible analogy (hey, its late!) would be that you're not excused from copyright infringement because the copyrigyht holder wrote something in ink, longhand, while you typed it out on a computer.

Hope this helps a little.

Re: Developing Free Online Games

If you have the webmaster's permission, but there are trademark owners who display their trademarks on the website, they may get angry if you display your games near their trademarks. In other words, you may need the agreement of the owner of the website (to ensure that your games do not run afoul of any trademark licenses, or cross-promotion or co-branding agreements), and not just its webmaster.