Trademarks and other legalities for Products...

Ok, i'm currently developing my new game scheduled for Fall 09. I thought i'd start a topic and get a few questions answered just to know what to do once i have a close to finished product. I basically want to protect the game from being copied either from idea, graphics, audio (since they're all created in house) etc. I know, i know hacking is common on iphone, but i want to protect the product from big companies that may copy the idea etc.

Idea: not possible unless you shoot them dead

Graphics: screen grabs can be used to successfully steal 2D graphics. 3D textures are more complicated to copy, but not impossible

Sounds: these are probably the easiest to copy


In short, a determined thief can copy just about anything, and copyright law stops at the border. Probably your best course of action is just not to worry about it.



Best,
-j

Well in the case of .sio2 file it is basically a .zip so you can add a password to protect it and unlock it with password in code. I never try it myself but I know its possible...

In sio2ResourceExtract:

unzOpenCurrentFilePassword( _SIO2resource->uf, NULL );

Now the password is NULL cuz there is none but... you can always modify the function to receive a password in parameters...

By the way guys lemme know if this is something that you would like to have in the next revision, I can add it...

Well for now, i'll concentrate on the product, but i might allocate a few days to put as much security on the app as possible. Don't iphones have unique id's that i store in my server and contact itunes server to match the id and see if that iphone actually bought the app under the registered itunes account ?

Sure but that's the run the application... users can always get access to the .app (that is basically an archive) and mess around with its content... password protected .sio2 would be the best COA for theses matters...

Allright I was curious and test it its working here's the necessary modification that have to be applied on sio2_resource.h / .cc

Code:



void sio2ResourceExtractFile( SIO2resource *_SIO2resource,
                       char        *_fname,
                       char        *_password )
{
   if( unzLocateFile( _SIO2resource->uf, _fname, 1 ) == UNZ_OK )
   { sio2ResourceExtract( _SIO2resource, _password ); }
}

...
...
...


void sio2ResourceExtract( SIO2resource *_SIO2resource,
                    char        *_password )
{
   unz_file_info fi;
   
   char name[ SIO2_MAX_CHAR ] = {""};

   unzGetCurrentFileInfo( _SIO2resource->uf, &fi, name, SIO2_MAX_CHAR, NULL, 0, NULL, 0 );
   
   if( !fi.uncompressed_size || sio2StringTok( name, ".DS_" ) )
   {
      unzGoToNextFile( _SIO2resource->uf );
      return;
   }
   
   if( unzOpenCurrentFilePassword( _SIO2resource->uf, _password ) == UNZ_OK )
   {
...
...
...



To create password protected archive use the following command on the output directory:

cd /OutputDirectory/

zip -9 -o -e Scene.sio2 -r *

A follow-up question on this topic:

Would password-protecting a zip file fall under any type of encryption export restrictions? I have minimal experience with this topic but noticed it came up quite often in the developer guidelines on the app store.