Irrlicht Engine

Has anyone gone through the process of copyrighting an actual idea for a game yet? If so who did you go through?

You cant copyright an idea.

Copyright covers the rights to duplicate artistic expresions afixed to a physical medium. I suppose you could write it down, but then someone else could write his own version just the same. You copyright only covers your expression.

Ideas can only be patented. HOPEFULLY you - and anyone else either - won't be able to that here in Europe. Hopefully. But in US it's free way to go. As long as you have the money that is.

You can only copyright your actual code, your implemented ideas.

You cant really patent ideas either. Patents cover inventions and designs involving a process - a new way or method to acheive a certain end.

Err I think I mislead everyone, the thematics for a game... character names can all be considered intellectual property under US copyright law right?

It's like I couldn't market a game with "lightsabres", I'm sure Lucas would love that

I'm not sure if a copyright is the same as a "registered trademark". I think it's the latter you want.

PS: unfortunately patent registration for software tends to be rather sloppy.
The US patent office is notorious, although they're not alone: the European Patent Office may also have made a couple of whoppers already.

Take for example Amazon's "one click" ordering patent. Apparently it isn't about the technical details, but about the user interface concepts involved ("one click" is all the customer needs to order stuff).

@Seliris : what idea you want to copyright ? write it here and i'll help you