從遊戲產業之抄襲現象論著作權法保護範圍應有的調整

在科技快速進步、網路無遠弗屆的時代，電子遊戲成為我們生活中不可或缺的一部分，遊戲產業一躍成為最大的娛樂產業之一，全球遊戲產業之規模已破千億美元。因而國內外業者紛紛投入其中，希望可以搶攻遊戲消費市場，成功在這個前景一片看好的產業佔有一席之地。然而迅速崛起的遊戲產業也存在一層隱憂，當一款新遊戲受到大眾喜愛後，類似的遊戲會如雨後春筍般的不斷湧現，迅速瓜分新遊戲所開拓之市場，遊戲抄襲成為遊戲產業的亂象。縱使沒有資金也沒有技術，只要抓緊時機，注意遊戲市場的動向，在受歡迎出現的那一剎那，開始投入製作相似的遊戲，利用搭便車的行為，即可以獲得不少的收益。惟此種不良陋習卻造成投入大量資源與成本開創新遊戲的業者難以估量的損失，因此如何保護創新的遊戲至關重要。因此本文將聚焦於遊戲產業之著作權保護，並針對遊戲角色與遊戲規則可否受著作權保護加以分析，先對於我國著作權法於遊戲之保護情形進行討論，再輔以我國與美國之電子遊戲相關案例之見解作為分析對象，嘗試尋找改善遊戲抄襲現象的解決辦法，藉以提供台灣法院及遊戲產業實務對電子遊戲著作權保護之未來方向。

關鍵字

遊戲產業；電子遊戲；遊戲抄襲；著作權；遊戲角色；遊戲規則

並列摘要

In an era of the rapidly advancing of technology and the boundless cyber world, video games are now an indispensable part of our lives. The game industry turns into one of the largest entertainment industries, with the the output value of the global game industry has exceeding 100 billion US dollars. Therefore, domestic and foreign companies are willing to invest in it, hoping to seize the game consumer market, and successfully occupy a place in this promising industry However, the rapid rise of the game industry has also brought negative effects. When a new game becomes a popular game, there will be many similar games that imitate the success of the popular game and quickly carve up the new game market. That is, game plagiarism has become an industrial chaos. Though the game company has no capital or technology, as long as it seizes the opportunity, chases the trend of game market, and makes a similar game, it will gain a lot of profits without any effort. Nevertheless, this bad habit causes immeasurable losses to the developers who invest a lot of resources and capital to create new games. Thus, how to protect innovative games is an important issue in the game industry. Therefore, this thesis will focus on the copyright protection of the game industry and analyze whether characters and rules in games can be protected by copyright. We will firstly discuss the protection of Taiwan’s copyright law in games, and then analyze the video game infringement cases in Taiwan and the United States. Through these analysis and discussion, we hope to find solutions to resolve the issue of game plagiarism so as to provide copyright protection for future developments of video games in Taiwan courts and the game industry.