Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

The presentation was very practical in nature, Mike is a former Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & rosati attorney and current iPhone game designer spoke today at 4Culture.

Practical Advice from Mike:

• Smaller game developers should consider S-Corp status – S Corps allow for easy transition to C-Corp later and allow you to write off losses on your income taxes.
• LLC is another option but LLC’s are less favored by investors and are tougher to convert to C-Corps
• w/ Contractors & Employees you must assign the works to the corporation or you have legal ambiguity in the rights. (I agree that you need agreements I would favor using a CC license over a blanket assingment )
• Avoid Viral Licenses,  (Note Rowe: I disagree here but I am likely to market the game as OS)1. “the gpl is the most notorious” 2.under the GPL if you add GPL code to an executable the requirements
• MIT or BSD license are great to use because they are attribution only, but you may need to do due diligence.
• MYTH: I can use it, it is fair use it is only a defense to copyright infringement. (I agree here fair use )
• fighting piracy is not productive even if you are legal right, spend your time making new games instead of

The main case on Open Source code is

Q: can you check the validity of OS code?

A: No

My answer: kind of there are projects like Fossology that will help you determine the history of code in projects.

Mike wrote a book The Business of iPhone app Development he is also on Twitter: @hivebrain