We have been getting some questions about Intellectual Property (“IP”) and what it means to you, so we would like to take this opportunity to share a few reminders.
You own the IP of the games and other content you create. And you grant us a license to use that IP in certain ways.
The Roblox Terms of Use require you to respect the IP owned by other individuals and companies. It is against the Terms for you to use IP from another game, film, book, video, music, artwork, or any other creation without explicit permission from the person or company who created it.
A common form of Intellectual Property protection is copyright, but IP also includes trademarks, publicity rights, and other forms. Remember, an asset or product does not need to have a (c) symbol to be copyrighted. To help you understand more about copyright, we have put together a page on our Developer Hub with more details and some guidance on how to avoid infringing someone else’s copyright.
Remember: the best way to be sure that you are respecting IP is to use your original work.
IANAL, but anything you make is copyrighted. If it’s a free model, then it’s still copyrighted but you license it to anyone who wants it without them needing to ask, credit, pay royalties, etc.
If you insert content into your game, you take responsibility for the origin of that content. If a Roblox user makes something themselves and publishes it, then that content is free to use. If someone takes stolen / third-party content and publishes it as free model, then you risk having to take down that content later on.
Roblox does not police content. They only take down content at request of the copyright owner. Otherwise, Roblox assumes you have the rights to all content you upload until disproven.
If this is the case, can I ask why action is not being taken against those who are violating the copyrights of other brands even in the most extreme ways?
I understand that Roblox do not act unless a cease & desist is issued, but if it’s explicitly against the terms of service then surely it should be enforced and followed like other terms are?
They police every other one of the Terms of Service, and the likelihood of the majority of the popular abusers of copyrights having explicit permission from a brand is next to 0.
You cannot show that infringement is happening in these games, because you are not aware of whether the owner of that game may have asked for a license to use said content. Only the original copyright owner will be aware of whether something is infringing their rights or not. Roblox cannot assume something is infringement either.
I really wonder how any copyright dispute would settle out on an international level… If a UK person uploaded a pice of copyrighted material originating to a Japanese company/individual to a US companies servers, to be viewed globally, hummmmmmm
This article is great! I’ll definitely be pointing to it when people ask about copyright in the future.
I think it’s missing answers to a few of the really common questions though:
Are Roblox games and clothing copyrighted? (Yes)
Can I use Roblox games or clothing without permission? (No)
Does being on Roblox protect me from legal action from copyright owners? (No, it does not. Roblox is not liable for your copyright infringement, and copyright owners can seek legal action against you for your copyright-infringing Roblox game or clothing. If they don’t take you to court when you violate copyright law, then you’re lucky.)
This is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer. These answers could be wrong, but they are my own personal understanding. Seeing official answers to these questions would be great.
Adding onto what’s been said, please note this announcement is for intellectual property in general, and NOT just US copyrights. If you use work that belongs to anyone else, regardless of whether it’s from a different country, it’s officially registered, etc, it can be taken down.
