This is definitely a tough case and not what roblox wants for one of its largest brand recognition aspects. The difficulty on roblox’s side is that Tommy (according to him) does have all the correct documents to prove his ownership which contradicts what roblox says above. To be honest no one can really know who will win since this is quite a complicated case. Roblox will have strong layers but if the evidence is not in their favour then they will still lose and have to payout. I hope that an agreement can be made soon enough so that no one has to worry about the sacred ‘oof’ sound effect.
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i really don’t think its copyright-free
it just really does not seem like that
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I still find it shocking that people are debating whether or not he made the sound/ is the original “owner” of it
As though people don’t understand you can sell the rights to those things, which he seemingly did
To me this seems the equivalent to throwing a hissy fit because you sold apple shares when they were super low value, and discovered they soared in value and want “your claim”
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If Tommy Tallarico is suing ROBLOX for the sound, it is because he wants money. ROBLOX is by far bigger than the company they purchased the “oof” sound so Tommy wants to sue ROBLOX (or pressure roblox into giving compensation) because ROBLOX is bigger. Because Tommy allowed people on social media and ROBLOX to know about this (which led to rumors and nonsense) instead of handling it privately with ROBLOX & the court, I think we are safe from lawsuits. But ROBLOX, just be more careful next time to avoid incidents like this.
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Thank you so much, you answered me. Now i know the topic was another rumor thx for clarifying. 
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I look forward to seeing/hearing this proof of his. Every few years in the news an unsuccessful band files a lawsuit against a successful band. “You stole my chords and made this song.” Sometimes it works sometimes not. Hope he has Prepaid Legal, lol. Bring your checkbook to the lawyer’s office, Tommy. Going to be an expensive point to prove.
Good thing Intellivision (Atari’s boring step-brother) is back from the grave and will soon be shipping more units than Playstation and Xbox combined 
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I like the idea of custom sounds for Roblox character sounds, perhaps the same way how you can buy animation packages? I’d happily purchase a Bruh Sound Effect #2 death sound any day 
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Your forensic skills seem to be pretty accurate. The typo in Correspondence ID shows that it’s not a real document. If it was, the people at the USCO(United States Copyright Office) would most likely have used a template they use for all copyright declarations and filled in the blanks for each specific copyright. This seems much more like an attempted replication of a true copyright, which would probably be illegal?
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What makes you say that? I was under the impression that he had adequate evidence. In a civil trial you only need 51% of the evidence in your favor to win usually, and if he made the sound I’d assume that would be enough.
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Y’know, the fact that Tommy is now promoting his own stuff after this controversy kinda tells me that it was done purely for publicity and free advertisement. 
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Personally, my own opinion on this is, if or when ROBLOX goes to court, there’s a 50,50% chance they’ll lose due to not paying Tommy Tallarico compensation for his work.
As ROBLOX themselves have said, Tommy does not have infact not have copyright to the ‘oof’ sound, or ‘uuuhhhhhhhff’ sound. As Tommy himself has stated via Twitter, he does have full copyright to the ‘oof’ sound.
ROBLOX has also added in, they are possibly looking forward to future events with Tommy Tallarico, thus meaning maybe making sounds for the platform? Tommy on Twitter has already stated he’s looking forward to working with ROBLOX is in the upcoming future!
Considering ROBLOX bought the ‘oof’ sound and all the other original sounds from a CD-ROM file, I wonder if all the other sounds have original copyright owners… 
In all honesty, the ‘oof’ sound was basically dragged from ‘Messiah’ and shoved into a CD-ROM which then ROBLOX bought thinking that the file was safe - free from anything, assuming it was safe to use without getting sued or taken to court. Although, sometimes you just gotta’ take those extra steps to make sure of things!
But, my final conclusion on this will be simple and short.
Tommy wants compensation, ROBLOX wont pay him because he doesn’t have copyright to the sound, (which he infact does, as he’s shown proof on Twitter.) ROBLOX bought a CD-ROM, honestly, ROBLOX should pay Tommy and the whole ordeal would be over with. They wouldn’t have to go to court, this post I am making now would be a shard of the past. Unfortunately, things might not go the way some of his think it should.
But, I’m not mad at anyone for doing anything. ROBLOX made a small-ish mistake by buying the CD-ROM without knowing original copyright owners to the audio’s. Case closed. My opinion has been put out there. (please no hate, I’m just giving my own context to this whole ordeal!)
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There is zero chance they lose
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From what I know, Tommy messed the whole case up by taking the case directly to Twitter instead of court.
I do not know if this issue is resolved or not but I do know that there are many rumors and false information surrounding this case so the chances of him winning aren’t too great (hopefully).
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But has anybody found the sound file of the “oof” sound on its own in the game files of Messiah? It might just be burnt into the FMV cutscene that the sound appears in within Messiah. In that case you might say that Roblox must have recorded the cutscene video and took out the part of the audio of the cutscene where the “oof” sound plays, but actually the “oof” sound as it appears in the Messiah cutscene is not the same as the “oof” sound in Roblox because the version we have in Roblox doesn’t have the background sound effects that you would hear when watching the cutscene while playing Messiah. This implies that the original “studio master” audio file of the sound effect was eventually put on the CD-ROM that Erik and David found, instead of just being recorded from the cutscene audio. See this post I made for more info:
To be fair, some aspects of Tommy’s ‘proof’ have been brought into question due to inconsistencies or weird things about them (in particular the correspondence ID thing) or not really proving if it really went through/was actually registered or not I think. So it’s seeming increasingly possible that there was evidence forgery done by Tommy or something, though it’s still being debated. For more information, see previous replies.
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I worked in radio for ten years. I’ve cut a lot of audio including just a word here or there. I worked in national network radio. Anyway, if you listen to the Messiah video a few times you can imagine trying to cut just the Oof sound and I can all but guarantee Roblox didn’t take it directly from Messiah. You can try it yourself and you won’t get a clean “ooof”. I’d testify in court to that part. As far as Tommy saying it got stolen basically and distributed… that’s something he’ll have to convince a jury of. Just like the bands claiming someone stole their bridge or chords for a popular song. A jury is like gambling. Who knows what a jury will decide, right or wrong.
I think it’s very strange he has copyright paperwork titled “Uuuuuh” “Eeeeeh” and “Ooof” considering the copyright and trademark offices are supposed to screen applications for common terms. I doubt highly in 1998 someone would have the foresight to do that, any real reason/budget to do so etc.
Maybe he did? Maybe he owns Foo, Blep, Puuuuuh, Der, etc. Why not lol. Everytime I stub my toe I’m going to send Tommy a dollar for the sound I make.
It’ll be interesting to see the outcome of all this…
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Tommy has yet to prove his copyright ownership of the sound and people have pointed out that no audio artifacting is present from Messiah and as far as I know the tools used to modify audio we’re not great at this.
@P4risAnd_Stuff has pretty much said what I was going to say.
Additionally Tommy has definitely created fake documents claiming they are real and covered it up by calling them a “submission” to the US, in which case it makes absolutely no sense to include a “correspondance id” that doesn’t exist yet and then censor it. (See my “forensics” post which shows he’s literally censored underscores showing he is definitely lying about something)
The final piece of “evidence,” Tommy’s contract, while looking to be a real contract, serves as no proof of anything. We do not know if the contract is valid and we do not know if the company itself breached contract (Tommy has not made any claims of this). It’s simply not enough information to say anything with especially because it’s not the full contract, just a small piece of it being a little less than half of the first page.
Just a note for what @sfinteractive has said, I believe you’re getting mixed up with trademarks. You can own the copyright to a specific work, but a trademark refers to a phrase, sound, logo, etc. What you’re describing sounds exactly like a trademark to me. The difference is for example, you can produce an image of a cheeseburger and have copyright ownership of it, however you can’t own the trademark to the word “cheeseburgers” or pictures of cheeseburgers (for obvious reasons) which would prevent others from using that in a commercial way.
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I mean, I don’t think that there will be many consequences, they might get fined and asked to replace the sound. This is just a sound.
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If Tommy decides to sue ROBLOX, ROBLOX has four major things to defend themselves with:
- Tommy blocks people on twitter that try point out holes on his end (very suspicious).
- Tommy censored blank “correspondence IDs” in (possibly?) fake legal documents.
- The “oof” sound in Messiah appears to sound slightly different than the one in Roblox.
- Tommy decided to take his case to social media instead of an actual court.
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It looks like he’s just looking for publicity. He hasn’t shown any legitimate evidence from what I’ve seen on his tweets. The copyright evidence he sent us seems to be fake and invalid. Let’s be realistic, what are the chances someone at the United States Copyright Office goes in and accidentally edits the correspondence ID which was probably a part of a template they use for all copyrights. This guy just wants the money, and ROBLOX has been forced to respond to all this bad PR and defamation.
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If enough evidence is found that the copyright documents are fake and all the evidence Tommy made up is invalid, ROBLOX could potentially counter-sue Tommy for trying to sue by providing fake evidence. I’ve heard Tommy has a net worth of several million so ROBLOX might get some of that money if they sue and win although the money ROBLOX could possibly get by successfully counter-suing Tommy is probably the equivalent of pocket lint to ROBLOX.
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