Intellectual property (IP), innovation, as well as creativity remains highly vulnerable in the online gaming space. Currently, India secures IPs through various laws such as the Copyright Act, the Patents Act and the Trade Marks Act.
While the larger discourse in around online gaming is stuck at the “skill versus chance” debate, multiple court rulings have created a ‘dominant factor test’ to differentiate a ‘game of skill’ from gambling. However, despite the evolution of the ‘dominant factor test’, online games of skill continue to face restrictions due to the misconceived notions around them.
Gaming studios have today developed online games, which are Indian in every sense with Indian stories, characters, motifs and themes. However, in the absence of a sharply defined legal framework in place to distinctively identify and protect these innovations, start-ups risk losing their originality and their products which would have a cascading effect on their markets, investments as well as the jobs they create. This impedes on the larger bucket of individual and organisational rights as well as on the opportunity for the Indian gaming industry to compete on the global stage.
Source: Barandbench
