The Creator's Legal Clinic: Advices and Explanations

OK, so if the description that I used is not an actual legal standard then I guess I could put it another way. What I mean is that the assets that I attached are intended to be interpreted as fan art in relation to copyright, and I was curious about the legal implications in relation to non-commercial matters.

There's still no such thing. There is no interpretation of "fan art" and copyright.

Unless you have permission from the IP owner, fan art is an unauthorized derivative of copyrighted/trademarked materials.

OK thanks.

Let's explain a bit of the details, that will probably help you more.

First, copyright does not care if commercial or non-commercial.
The only difference would be the amunt of damages you'll be sued for - which is usually much higher for a commercial game while noncommercials can get away with a cease and desist and legal fees until they take down their work from distribution.

Second, the term you need to understand is shared copyright.
Taking any resource and editing it creates a shared copyright of both the editor and the original artist, and neither can use the result without licence from the other. So ripping a resource and editing it does NOT give you the right to use it.

A special form of shared copyright is if you do the work all on your own but follow the style or design of someone else. In that case the other artist can only hold the copyright on the design, but never on your own work.
And then it becomes a bit vague because you can claim accidental similarities unless you name it for the original, and if you can claim to only have been inspired by the original you are legal.
(or if you can claim parody, but that is not as easy as you think because your game needs to be laughing at the original and a few other requirements)


In the end any fanart is almost automatically illegal if it claims the name of the original without licence, but can be legal if it only claims to be "inspired by" and has detectable differences.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that's not correct.

An author explicitly, legally does not have any copyright ownership if their creation is an unauthorized derivative work.



Unless you meant something like RPG Maker's RTP, where you are explicitly given permission to make and distribute edits, in which case yes - there's shared copyright on those edits.

@ATT_Turan the difference is basically the legal wording.
If the original artist does not give licence (and he can't if he doesn't even know of the edit) then the editor cannot use the result anywhere, including not registering it and so on.

That is also the reason for AI art because those AIs (or most of them) are trained on ripped resources

Well, that certainly provides reasonable context. So I guess on a similar note that I would have to verify that this particular boss design is structurally different enough to not raise any concerns, in particular considering that it has both a dodge phase and a battle phase.
(Also, I literally called someone out in a game design forum earlier today over their restaurant building design and choice of lettering for this same reason and in response to this same question based on what we have been discussing here since it tilted dangerously close to being a direct KFC rip-off despite the fact that the author was planning to claim parody.)

with a valid claim for parody he would be allowed to even use the true name and the original design of KFC under fair use.
The problem is that valid claim - a parody is not the same as a comedy, and just entering a few jokes does not make a game into a parody.

for it to be a parody you'll have to laugh at the original - and very few fanboys and fangirls are capable to basically joke and prank on the IP they are fangirling about.

Hence why I advised that it not be done. I also used the example of the Super Freak material from an earlier question as reason to discourage the idea: doing a rap track is fine in itself once you get past the writer's block, but the material you use for it can make or break things from a legal perspective which in the case of the Super Freak idea could become a liability if whomever is responsible for the Rick James catalogue got some funny ideas about someone who didn't bother with discussing the matter in an official capacity (and thereby failing to make the proper arrangements in order to do so).

EDIT: I forgot to mention, but someone in the same forum dug up these four things as the main criteria for determining what counts as fair use:

1. the purpose and character of said use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

EDIT 2: For the avoidance of doubt, here's the design that I was referring to:

@BreakerZero There is a difference between copyrights and trademarks. From what you've mentioned about the KFC situation would be more in the realm of trademark, which doesn't nearly follow the same rules. The "only rule" with trademarks (well not the only one, but the main one) is the reasonable customer expectation, meaning would a reasonable customer using the product think it is related to another company. In this case, would a reasonable gamer who sees this in-game believe that the game belongs to KFC? (or at least the rights of the game) I think it would be fine in this case.

On the other hand, if you rip the logo and use it as asset, that's under the copyright regime and would be copyright infringement. That's where you can use the fair use doctrine (if applicable of course).

So basically there's no fair use question in that particular case since it's a trademark question (well there is fair use for trademarks, but it's an entirely different thing). Only thing that could be a copyright issue is the logo image, and imo there's no issue since it's different enough in the picture you linked. Obviously, if there is anything else that was ripped from promotional images from KFC or any image protected under KFC's copyrights, then it would indeed be infringement.

It's important to identify under which intellectual property regime you are dealing before starting to apply criteria and exceptions like fair uses, since the rules are different for each different intellectual property regime.

Getting back to the subject of content licensing here. I was wondering if there is any difference in licensing for a full sync compared to a few small portions with regard to anything for which advance clearance would be necessary to avoid any potential legal issues. Or in other words, the difference between setting an infiltration sequence against a full recording of the Mission Impossible theme vs. using a few small portions of Super Freak in the context of a rap track. Online resources pertaining to the matter which can be provided as references would be appreciated as well.

@BreakerZero A lot of your terminology is unclear.

It basically seems to be asking the same question you've gotten the answer to, like, 18 times in this thread. It is illegal to use content you don't own/have the rights to.

Using portions versus the entire thing doesn't make any difference. Music artists that sample portions of other people's songs to put in their own pay royalties to the original artist.

I know that we've discussed this on and off and have established that much as being clear in terms of legal matters. And I do get that it's only fair (and in fact an obligation) to remit what's due in relation to this matter. However, the main question in this particular case is as to whether or not anyone here is aware of anything regarding the difference (if any) between portions or full track in terms of what would actually be due for that (or point me in the right direction at the very least).

With that being said, if what has previously been discussed answers that question just as much as anything else then I'll take it as the official word on the matter. And I do apologize for not being clear on what I actually meant.

@BreakerZero There are two different things to consider here.

First, copyright law does not care about portions or full work, commercial or non-commercial and a lot of other differences.
Illegal remains illegal, the only difference is in the amount of damages you might be sued for.


Second, there are exceptions for "Fair Use", but those are especially restricted by the purpose of the use, and only a very limited number of purposes is allowed (check wikipedia).
And most of those purposes do not apply to a game - for example you are allowed citing for news or reports on something, but your game would not be reporting on Impossible Mission for example.

The ONLY possible variant of fair use for a game is for Parody - and no, that does not mean a few yokes in the game, the entire game would have to have a theme of ridiculing Impossible Mission.
That is for example how those adult "Parodies" get away with their copyright infringments, no one will say that they are a good use of the IP.

So without making your game a parody of Impossible Mission, you cannot get away with any use of any sequence from the movie.

If you're trying to ask how much it would cost to license any of this music, and whether that cost varies depending on how much of the track you use, that is not a legal advice question.

I Googled "how license famous music" and this article came right up:
How To Get Permission To Use a Song
The link to the SESAC library has Mission: Impossible information.

Thanks for the information, it is greatly appreciated. I do have one more issue that needs to be addressed: another developer in the community is planning to use a charged abilities mechanic in direct competition with my project, and while it is established that general ideas aren't subject to copyright that doesn't mean that you can say the same for how it plays out. To be fair, I have not had a chance to review their work for any issues in this regard, nor do I know how long the project has been in planning. However, I do not want to be seen as a copycat due to the ethical and legal issues that are involved. Furthermore, the developer is dead set on implementing these mechanics (and potentially in a way that conflicts with mine). Unfortunately, I can't back out of any promotional activities at this point (my Steam Next Fest registration has been locked in and I can't claw it back) and I already have a slight delay in relation to mechanics expansion in other parts of the game. Does anyone have advice on how to deal with this situation?

Mechanics and ideas are rarely unique in the first place. The best way to go about this is just making the game cohesive, well-developed, and identifiable in its own right. Ideas are not commonly protected unless they were stolen from something executable that belongs to you, or if someone signed an NDA to not reveal trade secrets of yours, etc.

The best advice is to place your focus on the game’s holistic identity and not a single part of it. Games have frequently shared elements from one another but stood out in many other ways.

Once again, I have run into a legal conundrum. After discussing matters in online forums for console development, I hit a snag with the development of my client's game. The matter is threefold:

1. I am facing a situation where my current console porting solution may not be accepted by Microsoft due to the required app container being dropped in the context of game creation at the beginning of the year. (This is no hard loss as it's not a multiple platform solution, but it does raise transition issues, which I will get to in a minute.)
2. Even if I can get by on the technicality of using web code (read: HTML/Javascript), it is only really allowed on Windows computers with these changes - Xbox is not officially supported due to the obvious differences in function between game console configurations and a full-blown PC.
3. The recommended means of transition is to use a third-party plug-in called Game Face (which also has the advantage of being cross-platform), but this raises potential conflicts with the RPG Maker licenses as it would be engine upon engine (meaning that either Unity or Unreal would be involved).

Any ideas on how best to proceed with this? I have contacted Coherent Labs (which is responsible for Game Face) for the purpose of evaluating it for the requirements, but I make no guarantees that this will work (either technically or legally) as an alternative to the method that I was using before.

What is the legal question?

What law is potentially violated in all the stuff you said?

Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I'm referring to is the matter of the legal ramifications of using material from MV or MZ in something that's a direct competitor, even if it's being done for the purpose of translating the HTML and JavaScript to that competitor's product to accommodate a change in what a platform holder allows on its devices (and mostly in relation to assets from the RTP, which I don't recall as being permissible in that context even if this backup plan were to actually work).

In other words, it's not so much about a specific law as it is with the RPG Maker license.