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Nasir and Matt welcome Jesse Lindsleyto talk about people are ripping off successful mobile games and answer the question, "My partners and I have been developing an online software and a mobile app, but we are wondering if we should split the mobile aspect of our business into a separate LLC since not everyone is developing that and the app could stand on its own. Is that advisable?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and we’re ready to go. MATT: Yeah, I hope we make this a good one. The Wednesday episode seemed to be the most popular one. NASIR: Yeah, it’s the hump of the week and the top of the week, I think, for us. MATT: Don’t screw up, Nasir. NASIR: I know. It’s a lot of pressure now. Great. MATT: Let’s get into the story we have for today. It has to deal with this game, 2048, which I’ve heard of but I never play. I actually downloaded it yesterday. NASIR: Really? Okay. MATT: Just to see what it was and played it a couple of times. I get the gist of it and I can get how it would be addicting. I try not to do any of these games just because I don’t want to get sucked in. NASIR: I agree. I’ve played it and I admit that I actually have played it quite a bit but I’m not much of a mobile app gamer, I would consider myself, but for whatever reason, I heard other people playing it so I took a look and I like puzzle games. I got sucked in, I suppose. MATT: I’m surprised you’ve played because anyone that listens to this podcast knows that your math skills aren’t always 100 percent. NASIR: Oh, wow, that’s a low-blow. That is a low-blow. I was a computer science major. Math was important at that time. But, anyway, my AP Calc teacher is going to be upset at that comment from high school. I was just joking. MATT: So, what we’re dealing with here, the underlying story is the intellectual property behind these games and, more importantly, I guess the infringement thereof. But when we’re dealing with mobile games and I think they talked about board games as well, not everything you think would be able to be protected is protected. They mentioned how the protection is of the expression of an idea but you can’t protect the idea itself. NASIR: Yeah, and if you notice these 2048 games are everywhere and apparently it’s some kind of version of some game called Threes and I think everyone knows that, well, I never played but that game Flappy Bird which became really popular but then went off the market and then everyone put clones up, the reason is basically there was no patent on that idea and there’s maybe copyright as far as the graphics go and so forth but there’s limitations on that. But I wanted to get Jesse from Thrust. They have a pretty cool mobile app development company and kind of want to get their perspective. I’m sure this issue has been brought up in their development as well. Jesse, how are you doing? JESSE: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. NASIR: Very good. So, you kind of heard about what’s going on with 2048. You’ve seen all these clones and it’s weird. I use an Android. If you go to the top ten mobile apps that are free downloads or whatever, I think three of them are 2048 variations. I don’t know if you’ve ever had any experience with these kinds of issues dealing with your development. JESSE: Yeah, we come across this kind of stuff all the time. As developers, we get frustrated when people copy our ideas. I’ve been involved in these kinds of discussions from the gaming gambling days, early 2000 to the Facebook launching of games and a lot of the games were launched by Zynga and others were pure copycats of other games. So, it’s pretty standard and there’s court cases where sometimes the little gu...