forced to re-brand or alter the game, Similarly, ifyou plan to feature withdraw existing products from the celebrity images, names or market, and pay compensation and endorsements, it is a must to seek associated legal costs. approval from that celebrity’s It is good practice to clear the agent and preferably enter signed use of new names, logos, designs contracts (or at least obtain written and characters before first using or confirmation) for permission to applying to register them, to check use the relevant ‘image rights’ that they do not infringe. This should before publishing or externally be done through a combination of communicating this. Unlawful use searches on relevant IP registers (for of celebrity image rights carries registered rights) and general market additional risk from a PR and media research (for unregistered rights) perspective, which can result in and should be carried out by legal reputational damage to the business, experts. These searches will also brand and related game. allow you to better align the game’s Applying for IPR registered protection to the business’s protection needs and risks. Once you have completed clearance If you plan to use pre-existing searches, it’s important to think about material in your games, for example applying to register some rights as music, narratives, characters, films, early as possible. With patents you performances, or code, make sure risk losing the right to do so if the you have advance permission from invention becomes public knowledge the owner of IPRs in those materials, before you apply, and with trade preferably in the form of a signed marks you risk someone else applying contract. For music, in particular, for the same mark before you. This there may be a large number of could mean you have to give up your different IPR owners that own different brand, character name or game elements of the music, all of whom will title altogether and lose much of the need to give permission for its use. potential value of the game and 124