Third party client made in Unreal Engine Suppose that I made an MMORPG which has interesting gameplay, but rather bad graphics. One day, a fan of the game writes a client in Unreal Engine that lets them play the game with HD graphics (but they still need to buy subscription from me to connect to the server). Because of this, my game becomes more popular and I'm making twice as much money. Epic's license for Unreal Engine asks for 5% royalties, but I never agreed to this licence, the person who made the third-party client did. Do I have to pay royalties to Epic? If yes, is it just on the portion of profits from players that connect using the third-party client?
Technically, as I've read the unreal license agreement, the person who made the mod would owe Epic 5% royalties on all your sales related to the mod, even if they did not collect the sale price. You cannot be a party to a license you did not agree to, but Epic has very strange royalty terms that seem unreasonable on the surface and I'm not sure they've tested that in court. Here is what the license says: Royalty You agree to pay Epic a royalty equal to 5% of all worldwide gross revenue actually attributable to each Product, regardless of whether that revenue is received by you or any other person or legal entity, as follows: a. Gross revenue resulting from any and all sales of a Product to end users through any and all media, including but not limited to digital and retail; b. Gross revenue resulting from any and all in-app purchases, downloadable content, microtransactions, subscriptions, sale, transfer, or exchange of content created by end users for use with a Product, or redemption of virtual currency, either within a Product or made externally but which directly affect the operation of the Product; c. Gross revenue from any Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign which is directly associated with Product access or in-Product benefit (e.g., in a multi-tiered campaign, if an amount is established in an early tier solely for Product access, your royalty obligation will apply to that amount for each backer with the same access, but not on additional amounts in higher tiers based on ancillary benefits); d. Your revenue from in-app advertising and affiliate programs; e. Revenue from advance payments for a Product (from a publisher or otherwise); f. Revenue received in connection with a Product’s inclusion in a streaming, subscription, or other game-delivery service (e.g., Apple Arcade, Microsoft GamePass, or any similar or successor services), including without limitation development funds and bonuses; and g. Revenue in any other form actually attributable to a Product (unless excluded below). So the first part says "regardless of whether that revenue is received by you or any other person or legal entity". So somebody else may have revenue attributable to the product (aka a 50% increase in sales due to this mod), and you owe it even if you are not collecting or receiving that money directly. The last part (g) also says that revenue in any other form attributable to the product. Epic's license doesn't allow you to make a "front-end" to a paid product and release the front-end free, and collect money on the back-end. So if revenue is attributable to the product you develop, you owe royalties on the sales related to the product regardless of you collecting that income or not. Notice how it doesn't say "directly attributable to each Product...", it says "actually attributable to each Product". This is the part I find a bit egregious and not sure it will hold up in court, however the terms of the license are written so that the developer of the Unreal product has to pay royalties even if they don't collect money from it themselves.
You can licence your copyright under as many licences as you like to as many people as you like It's your copyright - you can do what you want with it. What you can't do is give someone an exclusive licence and then give licences to others - that would be a breach of contract with the exclusive licensee. How you let people know about the available licences is also up to you - your bio on Stack Exchange is fine.
This is not (necessarily) copyright violation It's possible that Quora's usage falls within Fair Use. At the very least, the argument could be made. If it does, then there is nothing that Stack Exchange or the OP can do. Stack Exchange can choose not to protect their copyright Unlike trademarks, which lapse if not protected, copyright endures. Therefore Stack Exchange can pick and choose the copyright fights they want to get involved in and those they don't. If you have brought it to the attention of the copyright owner (or, in this case, licensee) and the copyright owner chooses not to act then you have done all you can and significantly more than you have to do. The OP has copyright I note that one of the examples is your question. As the copyright holder, you are free to issue a DCMA takedown notice on Quora if you feel your copyright has been violated.
Copyrights don't apply to the names used. You mean trademarks. You copyright your game and you trademark the name. http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11v69k/using_a_guns_name_in_your_video_game/ Basically, it wouldn't be wise to use trademarked names in your game. Even though it's unlikely you would be sued and even if you were, you could possibly fight it under Fair Use, but do you want to take the chance? If some gun company decided they didn't like how you used their name, even if they have little to no grounds for a case, they can STILL sue. Anybody can sue for pretty much any reason where there is doubt. If they have enough money to throw around, they can drag you through the mud, ruin your business and then just lift their lawsuit. They don't need to win in court, just destroy you. Keep in mind that even if you don't use the name, if the gun in your game is an accurate replica of the real thing, it could still be a trademark issue. EDIT: Something you could consider though is asking permission. You never know. They may simply not care. You might even try propositioning them to pay YOU to have their gun showcased in your game. It's not entirely uncommon for companies to be willing to pay for a bit of endorsement advertising.
Monopoly is a trademark of Parker Brothers. You would need to get permission to use that trademark. The artwork of the game is copyrighted and cannot be duplicated without violating that copyright. In general, the labels meaning phrases like "Go to Jail" and "New York Avenue" are probably copyrighted and some court decisions have decided that labels are a copyrightable element. However, there is some gray area. The game mechanics are not copyrightable and can be duplicated. What this means is that if you clone the game and use new labels (like new property names and card titles) then you are probably fine. You would have to make a novel board design. If you clone the game, but use the game's labels, then you could potentially lose in court. Of course, remember that corporations will sometimes sue just to intimidate people, even if they have a losing case. Just because your clone is non-infringing doesn't mean they won't sue you. It costs them money to sue people, so if your clone is obscure or not used by many people it could fly under the radar and be ignored by the company. If your clone was a success and became widely used, that would significantly increase the chance you could get sued. In most cases a company will threaten infringers before they sue them, because it is a lot cheaper to threaten somebody than sue them. Therefore, you could make your clone and just plan on discontinuing it if they threaten you. Of course, there is a small risk they would sue you anyway. If you made no money then you are probably safe because it would be a lot harder for them to argue that you commercially damaged them if you made no money.
Can anybody create their own license? That is to say, can I for example create my own license under which I can license software? Yep. It's just a contract granting rights to use a copyrighted work. You can write your own contracts, so you can write your own software license. It's just often recommended that you don't, because common licenses are more well-understood, and inexperienced drafters may make errors that could result in problems, such as unintended restrictions, failing to restrict things that were intended to be restricted, or creating provisions that aren't enforceable in some/all jurisdictions. Can you mandate how a software will be released? Yes. Many software licenses, including GPL, do. The restrictions you describe in your example sound similar to CC BY-NC-SA. Also, would the following clause even be legal? Using this software you agree that any work and intellectual property based on or created with this software will be under the [INSERT_NAME_LICENSE] license, even after any and all code from this software is removed in a future update, or even if the work is rebuilt from the ground up I'm not entirely certain, but &quot;even after any and all code from this software is removed in a future update, or even if the work is rebuilt from the ground up&quot; seems, in my opinion, unlikely to be enforceable—especially &quot;even if the work is rebuilt from the ground up.&quot; How would you differentiate a complete rebuild from a totally new piece of software? More broadly, once your copyrighted code is no longer in the product, there's nothing for them to license from you. It's hard to imagine how you'd be able to claim that you're harmed by someone releasing a new version of a product that used to contain your code under a different license. Without harm to you, there's nothing for a court to redress.
When you license your IP (like a song) you can specify the terms and conditions of its use by the licensee, including revenue shares from any derived work. However, if, as your comment suggests, you grant an "informal" license, and later decide that you want to "firm things up" with a license having different terms, that's a matter you would have to either negotiate or litigate with your counterparty. If you want a common reference point for negotiation of this sort of license, you might have a look at compulsory license terms.
The book teaches you how to draw horses. Once you learned how to do it, and you draw a really nice horse, you have drawn it yourself. You have the copyright. You use it any way you like. Of course it's different if instead of drawing the horse yourself you just make a copy of an image in the book. That would be the author's copyrighted drawing. Added since the question reappeared: One way to learn drawing horses is to start by making copies by hand of others' good drawings, practicing, practicing more, until eventually you can draw your own horses, which was the purpose of the book. So these copies made as part of the learning process might be treated differently. And the might not actually be copies, just your best attempt at making a copy. On the other hand, taking this book, making ten copies using a scanner, framing and selling them, is obvious copyright infringement.