Can I remake Xenogears as a passion project? So in 1998, japanese game developer Squaresoft released the JRPG title Xenogears. The game was very rough around the edges but gathered a cult following of fans that keep it kicking even to these days, myself included. Part of the problem was that the development team was very new and inexperienced with 3D games, which was just starting to get steam at the time, with the advent of Sony home console Playstation. Some say that had the tram worked on the 2D mainstream technologies for game design which were mainstream back then, the schedule would not have been an issue and the game would have been far more polished and with a whole lot more content. Since then, the original team has disintegrated, square merged with Enix and the company has shut down anything related with the game. I have no idea what is the legal status of the game rights. But I really dig the idea of a pixel art 2D remake. Provided I decide to make one, without earning a single dime for it, can I still release it to the community as a &quot;fan project&quot; or is that illegal?
No The artwork is all covered by copyright that, in Japan, lasts for 70 years after the death of the last artist. As employees of Squaresoft, the artists don’t own the copyright, Squaresoft (or it’s heirs or assignees do). So, the copyright currently vests with the successor company Square Enix. They are the only organisation with the right to make or licence derivatives. While they currently don’t want to, they might in 10 or 20 or 40 years and any work you made would damage the profitability of that hypothetical project. So it isn’t fair use. So you can’t do it.
Interesting that they don't give a source and also don't link to anywhere (such as Wikimedia commons). So I assume that content is google's own. So generally speaking: No, when no license is provided, that means you can't use whatever it is in a project of yours (whether commercially or not), because the &quot;default&quot;, when nothing is specified, is that no license is given. So unless you find a license that grants you a permission on google's own content, these sounds can't be used freely.
Your app is a simple case of copyright infringement. All the Pokémon are copyrighted, the lettering and names are also protect by trademarks. Trying to claim fair use will be outright impossible: you'll use huge portions of the individually protected Pokemon (the iconic ones like Pikachu) and you are usurping a market they are already in. They have given licenses for apps (Pokemon Go). Pokemon are artistic and some form of fiction. The last straw might be if you'd do a rather obvious parody, but even then, I see no way to show Fair Use with what you stated. No disclaimer can change that, and publishing your work might open you to a huge lawsuit with damages for each individually protected Pokemon you infringed on. With between 750 $ minimum and 150,000 $ absolute upper limit per infringed item (last is for willful infringement), you don't want to infringe on Pokemon, as you could be very easily liable for a number in the 6 to 9 digits! Even if Nintendo might only try to get the statutory damages for all the 900 Pokémon, that is a number of at least 675,4000 $. And that's before looking at Trademarks. Pikachu has about 6 live word marks and there are 111 different Pokémon trademarks filed (some expired or dead)!
Public domain means that there is no (longer) copyright in the given work. This means that all rights associated with copyright are not controlled by anyone and there is no way to run afoul of copyright laws (note that in some countries a true &quot;public domain&quot; doesn't exist). Assuming you're correct that these works are in public domain, answers to your particular questions are: Does that mean I can play the video's as much as I want to any size crowd I wanted? Could I charge money to watch the videos? Yes and yes. If something is in the public domain does that mean all the parts of that thing are? This kind of begs the question. A work in public domain has no copyright in it. If one of its part has copyright, then it's not really public domain is it? What about the characters in the videos, could I make a new Bugs Bunny or Might Mouse animation on my own? If I wanted to use Popeye or Betty Boop or daffy duck in a video game could I? Copyright isn't your issue here, trademarks are. The characters are most likely trademarked, meaning you generally can't use them in your own works without licensing.
I wrote a letter to the Eclipse Foundation. The consultant pointed me to section 5 in their FAQ. My case falls under the term "linking". He warned that he isn't a lawyer, but offered the following short answer: The Eclipse Foundation does not consider linking with EPL content to be a derivative work and so you are not required to disclose your source code.
My question is, because I am not making any income from the distribution of the game, would the use of the copyrighted music fall under Personal Use? There are some &quot;private use&quot; exemptions in Australian copyright law but they have some fairly narrow conditions. These exemptions are fairly narrow because the point of copyright law is not to prevent you from making money with someone else's intellectual property but to protect the other person's ability to make money with it. If Alice writes a song and Bob distributes it free of charge, Alice loses revenue. Similarly, it is Alice's right to decide whether that song should be included in a freely available open-source software product, and her right to decide whether to allow that use without charge or in exchange for a license fee.
No It says right on the page you linked: These downloads are not public domain, as they are parts of content that has already been licensed and distributed. Although using these downloads may be permissible as long as the project itself falls under the rule of "Fair Use," it is ill-advised to use these downloads for any project intended for profitable gain or commercial advertisement, unless otherwise stated by Kyutwo.com.
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.