The Copyright And The Protection Of Videogames In Brazil

Technological development and the democratization of the internet in recent years in Brazil have enabled the dissemination of audiovisual works of all kinds on the Internet, including the video games, which may be regarded as so, according to the description brought by the local Copyright Act.

If, on one hand, the easy access to the Web by users provided the video game market a large and growing dissemination of its products and, consequently, an exponential intensification of the use and popularity of such games, on the other hand, it has enlarged the illegal commercialization, which has been motivated not only by the immediacy desire of its consumers, but also by the high costs of these products in Brazil.

As an audiovisual content, video games usually comprise many intellectual property elements, such as trademarks, characters, background music, the software source code, forming a work produced in co-authorship, whose patrimonial copyrights are normally owned and attributed to the producer of the final work. Therefore, this work should be respected even when made available online.

Notwithstanding the producers' ownership and the effort in the creation and implementation of protective mechanisms to the content of video games, according to the annual report of the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), Brazil is the fourth largest market for pirated games including increasingly the online piracy mode.

It is important to highlight that besides the constitutional protection that grants authors the exclusive right to use and publish their works this subject is also regulated by other specific legislation. Law No. 9610/98 (the Copyright Act), in Article 17 § 2, provides the producer the ownership of the economic rights over the entire body of the work, whereas Law No. 9,609 / 98 (Law of software) protects the rights of the holder as to the...