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Legal concerns regarding 'commercial uses'

yonicstudios

Game Developer
54
Posts
8
Years
We are currently developing a videogame that is not related to Pokémon at all, and we're hoping in starting a Kickstarter campaign around December of this year for a release in July 2018.
And last week I started the development phase of a side project I'm personally working on, a Pokémon fan-game, and I had the idea of distributing a complete copy of this fan-game early exclusively to backers, including some exclusive content.

The problem is that in our country there's a legal void regarding the commercial usage of media for crowdfunding purposes, which means that there is no regulation around doing this, and although it's technically alright to distribute fan-games as a reward for backers right now, it could end up not being OK in the future.
I'm not sure if this is the same situation in Japan, and due to recent legal actions being taken by Nintendo with other Nintendo fan-games, I can't help but being a concerned about the risks of this distribution.

Even if after the official release of the Pokémon fan-game (around the same year as our main game) the price will be free, would it still be considered to be a media used for commercial purposes?
 

Mafi0s0

The real Mafioso with a knack for stealing Pokemon
5
Posts
7
Years
  • Age 22
  • Seen Apr 14, 2017
You could make a website where backers got a user and people with access to the website had access to the download link. Hence bypassing the legal issues as long as you clarify that it is a non-profit game and that all rights go to Nintendo. Only a quick tip based on my knowledge of copyright law.
 
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