I have a question concerning a game that I have begun developing. Is using the name of a location in a movie or book copyrighted, or prohibited?
Example: I am building “Hogsmeade” from the movie, “Harry Potter”. I plan to call the game “Hogsmeade”, is the name of “Hogsmeade” copyrighted, or am I safe to use it? Also I plan to incorporate buildings that are found in “Hogsmeade”, like “Zonkos”. Are these names of places and buildings found in Harry Potter copyrighted? Will I have to name the game something else, and the buildings inside something else?
What are the consequences for using the name “Hogsmeade” for my game if any?
Will I get in trouble?
As BlazeLin said, it’s copyrighted. You can see in the image they posted that the names of things require permission, which most likely includes locations that have original names.
If companies or content owners don’t ask Roblox to take it down they won’t.
But just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should it’s more of an ethical dilemma if you ask me. My suggestion is to make your own brads and slightly alter the names.
I dont know what exactly do they mean by “Name” whether it is name of character or name of location, I’ve seen other games use location names from movies like the game King’s Landing
Any ideas how I can clear up this issue? I really would like to just call it “Hogsmeade”. Can I still incorporate “Hogsmeade” into the title, but add. “Welcome To Hogsmeade Town Of Wizardry” would that still be copyright?
I am not a lawyer so I cant really give you a straight answer, you might try to contact roblox support, but expect them to reply you with something like this:
Well… I guess I will just alter the names and spelling a bit, and if anyone asks or tries to sue me, I will just say that “Hogsmeade” is not the same thing as “Hogsmeadee” and means something entirely different.
You cannot trademark or copyright a set or location so that’s fine, you could build an exact recreation if you wanted. However I did a bit of research and I was unable to find the status of the word “Hogsmeade” and found nothing. however copyright and trademarks apply to company titles not like this, if there was a company, corporation, etc. named “Hogsmeade” you would have trouble however since this is untrue you won’t have to worry about any of these issues. Universal or whoever owns the franchise cannot have rights to that specific TOWN name, because towns are not a concept created by them, unlike quidditch. Anyways, long story short, you should actually be just fine using this name.
All in all, there will be no consequences, there is no crime. You should be fine creating this. Just as long as you don’t use concepts (with names) copyrighted or trademarked by a company or infringe on an actual company’s name. For example: there are full recreations of Hogwarts on here, named Hogwarts, they are not taken down because they are not violating any ownership, (do not quote me on that though, I am still not completely sure if Hogwarts is an brand asset or something along those lines for Universal, in that case they may be infringing.)
Anyways as I said before, yes you are fine doing this.
Ok, thanks, that clears up a LOT! However, I have one more question.
Are the names of places inside that town subject to copyright? For example, “Honeydukes” the candy shop? Also, is since “Quidditch” is copyrighted, am I permitted to alter the name slightly to something like, “Quittich” and be all clear with copyright issues?
