EVE Information Portal

Because he already has given it all away for free :).

I've got a fairly simple question for the legal team to answer:


Why are you offering to license people's own art back to them, rather than having them license their work to you?


Let's be honest, "you get to see your logo in a game!" is not actually a very good price for the IP CCP is demanding be handed over for without recompense, and "we'll totally let you use it still, in certain limited scenarios!" is not much better either, fresh as it is on the heels of sending C&D's over T-shirts.

Well its (been made into) a complicated issue and they probably get paid by the hour so...

They should consider running for Congress.

Or doing UI for Facebook, or running Google+, etc.

Iceland has been a signatory to the Berne Convention since 1947 (Source). This makes CCP obligated to recognize the copyright of individuals in other countries that are also signatories of this convention, and vice versa. Additionally, copyright laws of a given country never contravene or provide less copyright protection than the Berne Convention. The convention provides allowance for people living in one country to claim copyright on their IP in other countries. Look it up.

CCP does not commission players to create alliance logos specifically for CCP's use; logo submission is a voluntary service and no compensation is awarded to the player for providing unique artwork. Alliance logos that do not include any recognizable aspects of anyone else's intellectual property are covered by the Berne Convention if the individual is in a member country and the owner of the logo has put the artwork into a fixed and tangible medium (including saving to a hard drive or disc).

So, in the alliance logo submission process, CCP should only be stating something like:
1. The individual submitting the artwork agrees to allow CCP to store the artwork in CCP's database in a format appropriate for the database; and
2. The individual submitting the artwork agrees to allow CCP to retrieve the artwork from the database when and as needed for use in applicable locations of CCP's game client (and EVE Gate) for the purpose of identifying the alliance under which the artwork was submitted; and
3. The individual submitting the artwork must have the legal right to submit it and will not submit artwork that is someone else's property, and if proven to have done so, (i) CCP will immediately remove said artwork, and (ii) any legal costs brought to bear against CCP by the legal owner will become the responsibility of the individual who submitted the logo.

That's it. That's all the artwork submission to CCP is intended for: identification of a player-created entity in the game client and EVE Gate. CCP should not have any expectation that it can use the artwork anywhere else or for any other reason. If CCP later decides they would like to use it outside their database, their game client, and EVE Gate, such as (but not limited to) on their forum, within a comic, in a TV show/movie/video (including promotion of same), or on merchandise, that's a whole new situation. At that point CCP needs to approach the owner of that unique artwork for a new license, and that license needs to specify exactly what else CCP can use the logo for.

The license for an individual to upload and post the alliance logo on the EVE Online wiki should be similar as outlined above, except that point 2 would reference the wiki rather than the game client and all points should cover written content (derivative work) as well (see second post below).

It's worth noting that corporations that have no alliance, or are in an alliance with no alliance logo, have only their corporation logo to rely on for any website or physical merchandise they want to create and/or sell. They also have hosting packages, comm servers, and so on that need to be paid for, and it's just fun to have stuff to distribute.

"Original" corporation logos are limited to the finite number of combinations possible via CCP's in-game tool. Many of the art assets in the tool are generic symbols (for example, the symbol for the male gender/Mars, or the ankh, or any of the heraldic items). CCP only owns the specific stylization of their art assets that portray those symbols.

So, a CEO uses the tool to design a corporation logo. Let's say he chooses the symbol for the male gender/Mars. He selects yellow from the color picker so the symbol appears gold, and puts this combination on a black background. The image generated by the game client belongs to CCP because it uses their specific stylized art asset of that symbol. But if that CEO opens Photoshop, draws the symbol for Mars himself, then uses filters and a yellow fill to make that symbol look like gold, and puts it on a black background, that specific Photoshop image belongs to that person, not CCP, because the symbol for the male gender/Mars is not recognizable nor unique to EVE Online or CCP. So long as the CEO only uses his Photoshop file--and not the image generated by CCP's game client--he has every right to put that image on his website, coffee cups, tshirts, mousepads, etc and generate revenue from it if he wishes.

(Continued next post...)

I was watching something once forget what, but some guy in the UK makes custom storm trooper suits and other star wars inspired suits, and he sells these suits. All without a license. And he is protected because they are considered Art.
All his suits are hand made not mass produced.

Yeah, apologies for the delay.

I'm just posting here to let you guys know that we're still working on this issue, we're still discussing things with legal, and we'll have some follow up information as soon as we can.

Right now we're looking at discussing this with the alliances that were involved in the third party vendors takedown, then we'll be looking at giving more detailed information in terms of an explanation of the situation and where we go from here.

Sorry this is taking a little longer than expected, but it's a pretty complicated situation.

In your dev post you said everything that I submit in eve was Intellectual Property of CCP and that this was standard practice, well this got me thinking because I reuse the names of most my characters from one game to another and if this is infact a breach of Intellectual Property I would have to start getting my lawyer friends on the phone to protect me

of the MMO's I've checked so far "World Of Warcraft, World Of Tanks, Lord Of The Rings Online,Final Fantasy XI" none of them have a clause stating that by accepting the EULA you are giving any IP rights to the owning company... I might be wrong as I don't speak legaleze, but that doesn't really sound like industry standard to me.

Runescape's terms of use states that the user is granting them "non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, worldwide license to use and/or modify such materials on any Jagex Product as we see fit. You waive any moral rights to the extent allowed by law."


I do however know of a few games that allow the player to retain all rights to submitted user created content the biggest being Second Life which seems to have no problem with most of its world being created by its users

So which other MMO's are you referring to to call the EULA's clause for stripping intellectual property rights from their owners Standard practice?

Looking at it morally, not legally, that's a pile of animal excrement. If you want to claim it as intellectual property, you design the bloody things!


No, you mustn't. You choose too. You always have the choice, and you choose to assert the claim to them. Stop hiding behind such deceptive language, and just come clean--You're more interested in money(or protecting it) than giving creators sole ownership of their creations.

So, does this mean soon little bees videos (featuring the bee) will be kicked out of youtube?

I like linking it to prospective newbees, you see.