Is a parody of an existing car brand allowed?

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#21

What if the car design is a patent design? What about that? Can’t I get copyrighted?

#22

Nope, because it’s not a physical copy of the patent, it’s a virtual one. I don’t think copyright laws and patents extend into the virtual world.

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#23

Copyright? I believe this is more of a trademark than copyright.

Honda™ Civic®. Trademark and a Registered Trademark. Using a registered trademark, you’re allowed to be sued. Not sure for the unregistered.

Going through Wikipedia on “Intellectual property”, the first image shows footwear having “NKIE” and “MCDNOLADS”, captioned saying it is not allowed. I trust Wikipedia on this.

A lot of shooter games get around this by calling guns such as the Desert Eagle “Deagle”, “Desert .50 AE” and such.

LAST EDIT: Now that I learned more, I became even more confused. Yep, get a more qualified person, like a lawyer.

But I’m not an expert on this, so probably just use the terms I have mentioned as a place to start research.

#24

I do not think civic is copyrighted. I searched and found companies with civic in their names

#25

Civic is definitely not an intellectual property, it is a common noun. I was just providing an example.

#26

If it is a high-fidelity design you need licenses (because you would be copying). Cars, weapons… are IP (copyrighted work), you shouldn’t use without permission.

As you’re saying “parody”, it is not supposed to be the exact same name/design/mechanism/logo… so it would be an original creation.
You could say it has some artistic value, but it is dangerous see: Call of Duty games can depict Humvees without a license, says judge

See also:

More about Law for games:

Oh, and this is not legal advice!

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#27

Vehicle simulator does this really well, it has like small bits of the name but something that’s close to it. Take inspiration from their car re-names