When you use Roblox, you assume responsibility for everything you upload. Roblox will not protect you in any way. It’s in the TOS that they do not claim copyright of anything you make, you retain the copyright. As well, if someone steals your assets you can submit a DMCA claim about it through www.roblox.com/support with the drop down reasoning of “DMCA Claim.” There, you will provide details of who has what and how you believe they obtained it.
Please. Do not talk on subjects you are uncertain of and try to provide the context to what you’re talking about because saying stuff like this is how users get mis-informed and then this spreads and gets out of control.
Here talks about using copyrighted works you don’t own.
Advice as far as the original post. Try to find something that doesn’t so closely resemble legos. Bevel then edges, maybe make the studs into squares rather than circles, or go wild with triangles or something else. And never utter Lego in titles or in any reference material to the game. Don’t even say “it’s like Lego.” Fans of the game can say that all they want but you do not want to get caught in a legal battle with them having proof you attempted to copy from them.
Find a new way around the situation by trying to distance yourself on some form of differences. And if you’re modeling specific real Lego pieces (example they crap shown in this thread), Lego has heavy copyrights on the look of this pieces. That’s gonna be a hard no.
Also, suggestions:
Change the post title. You were warned, not disabled or suspended.
Stay as far away from Lego as you can. Roblox will moderate you further for repeated offenses. If they didn’t, as a platform owner, they could be sued by Lego for not “upholding a DMCA Claim.”
Be mindful that you are legally on the hook for anything you create on Roblox. Thus just consider “if (I) was Lego, how would (I) feel if (someone) stole (my) design and made a video game with it?”
Search “Lego” on the forum. There is A TON of posts from people in the past making this same mistake. Learn from their posts.
Lego did events with Roblox in the past. Now the games and account running them are completely disabled. It is obviously they are not working together anymore. What you said is good advice and should be followed.
I am pretty sure they own their company name, games like Subway have been taken down before purely because of the name, if there was no logo roblox doesn’t just randomly ban parts for looking like real life items, it was probably programmed to ban any item with a company name in it at all.
This is very interesting topic. However I can see why this issue was given to you. Lego,Disney, Subway and other larger corporations will do anything to protect there assets. How ever a lego piece by itself is actually patented. Most of those groups like subway and Hilton are not selling you a patented product but own copyright on all logos and names ect. Here you are actually dealing with a product. How ever I would highly suggest how far patented items limits are.
Disclaimer:
In no way am a lawyer. So I could be wrong. I highly recommend doing further research.
After some quick research, the Lego brick cannot be part of their trademark.
“The issue was whether the famous LEGO brick served a technical function. European law says companies can trademark graphic images like words, designs, the shape of their goods and packaging – but trademarking a product’s shape, if that shape is “necessary to obtain a technical result,” is not allowed, the court said.”
This means that Lego cannot technically own the Lego brick design under law as it serves a basic function.
Now, this was in a European court which i’m not sure how websites combine legal information like that if one ruling allows it while another doesn’t however if the user is based out of the EU it may be allowed.
Lego has also lost their patent to the original brick since 2011.
Your not going by American laws though, along with a 2010 document… ROBLOX is an American company there for it also has to obey by all state of California and federal laws. Did some more research on this topic for the past hour along with discussed it with a friend who is a lawyer for patents. There is nothing wrong with a Lego being made in game. However if you where to make models of it and then sell it then there is issue but using it on any gaming platform is okay. It’s best to stay away from using the term Lego in the game. @thomkok13 Your best bet is to try to contact roblox via email and the Lego company to discus this further. Lego has been known to scare company’s even though there not breaking trademark laws.
I remember once hearing ROBLOX was originally using lego bricks and had to switch to what we now know as studs due to copyright issues. I’m guessing that this is probably in relation to that and ROBLOX doesn’t want to run into any legal issues. Try changing the style up a little bit and it should be ok. Have you faced the issues again? Hopefully ROBLOX can just issue warnings instead of bans for this topic as I’m sure most people don’t know about the rules.
Hello there! I’m truly sorry for your unfortunate moderation in this incident, although I am not focused within this field, I believe talking with Roblox’s skilled and designated moderation team on regards to your moderation response rather than talking to people on the Roblox Developer Forum would be more suitable.
To promise that the company Roblox is secure and far from any legal matters, they have to act strict and sometimes off-putting to topics similar to this one. Although you may think otherwise, copyright covers a large portion of a piece, for example, your item was named “Lego”, then in your later piece, you made a complete duplicate of a lego piece, both of witch fall under the copyright act.
I would suggest like I mentioned before to get in contact with the Roblox moderation team, they are here to help and discuss what you can do and what you can’t.
No. The defining factor for ‘is it fair use’ is ‘is it transformative’ NOT ‘is it commercial’.
While some content may be released under a ‘personal use only’ licence, default copyright is not like that and applies in full force regardless of your revenue.
Unfortunately, patents do exist, although I’m unsure Lego has one.
If you create something that resembles Lego, they do not know if you are using Roblox to model it so you can 3D print this and ‘cheat the system’ so to speak.
You only recieved a warning, nothing drastic. Like someone else said, it was probably just the automatic system. Just be careful next time, and instead of uploading to roblox, save it to your files.
I am really happy about everyones opinions. There is much diversity and it gave me the courage to ask for permission to LEGO and Roblox. Do not forget to be kind to each other. This topic is to help people know what to do with copyright. There are a lot of options to take. You can remove the company name and change the design of an object to be far enough from the original design, ask for permission to the owner or just not get involved with things with copyright or with patents.
These are awesome options to use for what fits you.
Your safest bet is to avoid using actual brand names in any scenario. Just make up a fake one. I know that’s already been stated, but it’s just such a common thing I see happen on Roblox. I hope anyone reading this thread has a simple takeaway:
