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Intellectual Property Protection
Every year, successful board games are copied and cloned by intellectual property thieves, resulting in lost revenue for game creators. These games often appear for sale online and in international markets, tricking your customers and harming your business.
We offer a full range of services to protect your game from IP theft, allowing you to focus on what matters — making your games — instead of having to worry about clones and copycats.
How Board Game & Card Game IP Theft Happens
Your game is valuable. It’s your creation, and its unique design is what makes it special and desirable for gamers.
One of the most common questions we get asked is how intellectual property theft happens in the tabletop gaming industry.
The most common form of intellectual property theft occurs internally, when a staff member at a manufacturer, trading company, or supplier, steals your game’s design files and sells them to a third party.
This third party usually prints their own version of your game for illicit sales, either online or in countries in which you do not actively market your game. IP thieves take advantage of differences in laws and law enforcement between countries to illicitly profit from your hard work, all while making it difficult for you to fight back and gain control over how your game is distributed.
Unfortunately, IP theft is still commonplace in China, and almost all cases of IP theft within the board game industry have involved the illicit sale of board game artwork by China-based game manufacturers and trading companies.
How We Protect You From IP Theft as a Game Publisher
IP theft can be devastating for your business. If an IP thief gains access to your game’s files, they can print their own copies cheaply and undercut you in the marketplace, stealing from you and resulting in a subpar experience for your customers.
We take intellectual property extremely seriously, and we’ve designed several systems to protect our game creators from this well-known problem.
Our system for protecting your game starts with the way we receive and transfer your game’s art assets. These files are the heart and soul of your game, and they’re the #1 target for IP thieves.
We use what we call a “Safety Net” system for your game, which involves several steps to keep your game’s files private throughout the manufacturing process.
Many board game manufacturers do not create your game in house. Instead, your files are sent to third party contractors, who, for example, print your game board and rulebook, create your dice, design your game’s packaging, and complete the other steps involved in making your game.
During this process, it’s extremely common for all of your game’s artwork to be sent to each contractor. This leaves your game’s files extremely exposed to intellectual property theft, as the number of people who can profit from selling them is much greater.
Furthermore, this process takes places entirely within China, where it can be very difficult for you, as a foreign game creator, to access legal protections.
Our Safety Net approach limits the exposure of your game’s files to other people in three key ways.
First, your game’s files are stored privately using our secure cloud storage system. You’ll receive a private SharePoint link and will be able to see who has access to your game’s files throughout the manufacturing process.
This system is much more secure than the typical email-based file sharing approach that’s used by trading companies and other manufacturers.
Second, our production process takes place almost entirely in-house, meaning your files aren’t shared with outside manufacturers. We print and produce your game internally in our industry-leading factory, meaning your files never leave our system. Printing of your game is never outsourced to any third-party supplier.
In the event that non-printed components for your game need to be made with a third-party supplier, we only provide the supplier with the files needed to make the specific part, not your entire game. This means that your most valuable artwork is never shared with anyone outside our company.
Third, our sales and support team, who are the people who receive your game files and prepare them for production, are located in Malaysia, a country with strong rule of law and similar IP laws to Western countries. None of our sales reps are located in China, further reducing the risk of your game files being shared with unwanted third parties.
In addition to protecting your game’s files through our internal systems, we can help you to receive legal protections for your game, including a design patent and copyright. We have an exclusive cooperation with DeWei, one of the largest corporate law firms in China, allowing us to offer board game creators and publishers help with protecting their games. We can also help you to receive legal protections for your game in other markets.
Get Support & IP Protection Around the Clock
Talk directly to your private support rep and benefit from our industry-leading IP protection services.
Track Every Production Step as it Happens
Monitor your order at every production and fulfillment stage using our industry-leading ERP system.
About HeroTime
Manufacturing
Many large game publishers have unreliable production lines. At Hero Time, we bring all required processes in-house for seamless integration between publishers and the factory. Since 2019, Hero Time has produced over $10 million worth of games and integrated over 43 different production processes to meet game publishers’ needs.
1 Partnering, Not Outsourcing
2 Specialized Manufacturing Innovation
3 Digitalizing Processes and Streamlining Operations
1 Partnering, Not Outsourcing
Partnering, Not Outsourcing
We view our relationship with board game publishers as a collaborative partnership based on mutual trust, transparency, and long-term commitment. This approach ensures the best strategic collaboration and operational excellence.
2 Specialized Manufacturing Innovation
Specialized Manufacturing Innovation
Our strong partnerships allow us to invest in advanced production lines and specialized machines that meet the lead time and quality requirements of game publishers. With cutting-edge equipment and automation, publishers can focus on market growth without worrying about production bottlenecks.3 Digitalizing Processes and Streamlining Operations
Digitalizing Processes and Streamlining Operations
Hero Time addresses the inefficiencies of game manufacturing by investing over $200K in an ERP system. This system manages successful board game manufacturing at scale, improving productivity, transparency, and agility.
Hersh Glueck
Founder & CEO
Yang Li Bin
Production & Facility Manager
Yang Yu Hua
Sourcing and QC Manager
Zhang Yan Ling
CMO
Approved by: Disney FAMA
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Unit 2508a
Bank of America Tower,
12 Harcourt Rd,
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+86132-6309-5321
Manufacture@herotime1.com
