Hi ,
I want to remake an old arcade game, it has been published over the years with many different versions and actually there are about 500 versions of this game on iphone store alone.
However i have been asked by partners to check the legal side of using the game idea in our game , where and how can i check weather the game is copyrighted ?
Thanks
As Lèse majesté says in a comment, copyright covers the code and the images used in the game. So as long as you don't use any direct copies (make sure the graphics are different enough, for a definition of different enough, ask a lawyer).
In general, legal questions are better put to legal professionals than to fora of software developers.
Media and code are copyrighted, game concepts are not. Still depending on your country laws you need to be concerned with patents and trademark.
Copyright doesn't apply to the game concept so much as the specific content (code, images, audio, text) within it. As long as your clone is sufficiently different and does not make use of resources that were made by the original author, you're probably ok.
Copyright usually automatically applies to any work. It ceases to apply after a long time (about 50 years IIRC), or when the author deliberately transfers the rights to someone else. So if you are in any doubt, and can't prove that the rights have been opened up for you to use (under the terms of a license for example) then you're safer assuming you are not allowed to copy something - so write your own code, draw your own sprites etc.
It would also be possible for some features of the game to be patented, which protects those parts of the design/implementation from being copied. Generally if you see the same designs in other products by different authors, you're probably safe to use them.
In addition, there may be trademarks or brand names that you can't re-use.
If in any doubt, consult a lawyer with game-specific domain knowledge.