EVE General Discussion

Six weeks ago we got an email from Cafepress informing us that CCP had made a copyright claim against our logo, which had been uploaded with the intent of making VOLT T-Shirts and the like available for members.

We weren’t happy about this, CCP have clearly not had a problem with people doing it before (ref: all the PL logos they’ve shown on AT streams!) and we consider the VOLT logo to be ours, not the property of CCP.

We looked up the relevant sections in the EULA and ToS and they do indeed claim ownership of pretty much everything.


There are a few holes in their arguments that may be of help to others with similar problems:

• The owner of the copyright on the logo did not submit it to CCP, so the person who did was not in a position to transfer ownership.
• The logo was not uploaded or transmitted to the system by a VOLT memebr, it was emailed to a CCP staff member, who checked it, presumably edited it a bit and then uploaded it into the client.
• The submission process at the time required that the logo have a grey background, therefore a derivative of our primary logo was made to meet this requirement. This is the one they were sent.

Any one of those is sufficient to negate their claim to own our main logo (with a white or clear background) and any derivatives we make of it (such as the ones with the alliance name on too).
In addition to the emails between us and the CCP lawyer (which we can publish since they are not private correspondence), there have so far been 11 emails back and forth between us and CCP Falcon (EVE Online Community Manager) which cannot be published without permission. We have asked for permission, but as yet, Falcon has refused.

The lawyer has not at any point been helpful, except to "allow us to use" our own logo at cafepress, and has primarily focussed on ignoring what we say, and making more and more ridiculous claims. The latest being the one at the top of this post. We replied with the points I made above, and are awaiting a reply. We also pointed out that since The Volition Cult has been using that name (including on our website) for the greater community, outside of EVE, since before the alliance was founded, there is no way that CCP can own the name either.

CCP Falcon was initially helpful, but ended up just reiterating that we don’t own our logo or name.

Basically, CCP are trying to steal our intellectual property from us, and bully us into letting them.

To make sure that this cannot happen in the future we have released the VOLT logo, in all current forms (except the one we uploaded to CCP) under a Creative Commons license. We encourage others to do the same: http://volt.vc/2014/02/12/volition-cult-logo-released-under-creative-commons/

Guard your intellectual property!

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Further reading:
The most objectionable email from CCP lawyers
Our response

Also, you might want to fix your links.

In one of them, you literally dox'd a CCP employee.

EULA is a deterrent, not a contract.

All it can really do is scare people.

The mistake you made was not trademarking it like Sturmgrenadier does with their things, but that costs money.

This is going to create a serious problem if ccp start imposing this as a hard rule... why? because many of the logos and names used in game were taken from other games or even real companies.. you cannot slam others for infringment on a draconian rule without expecting reciprocation.

Good for you on fighting back. I must admit, it's a nice logo. If you decide to make this into a legal dispute I'd be interested in how it turns out. I know you'd have the considerable legal advantage, but likely not the financial advantage.

It's still pretty bad. The e-mail says they can do it, but only to "support their in-game play" - eg buy PLEX, eg it's the same as before. CCP wants it all.

You're half right.

The shirts did not say EVE on, nor have any logos or branding other than our own. They were tagged in teh store with "eve" to make them easier for our members to find.

We did essentially solve the immediate problem, although almost 2 months on from the original take down, the shirts on cafepress are still in the "pending" state and can't be purchased.

However, along with saying that we could use the logo, they again asserted ownership, making NO answer to the points about them not owning it and added the claim to ownership of the name.

We don't want to just be given permission to use our own logo, we want CCP to stop trying to steal it.

They're not asking for a cut, therefore whatever the lawyer says they can use the money for (to support in-game play or whatever) is completely throw-away. This is as much of a go-ahead as you should expect from their counsel.


I fully appreciate that this is a huge pain in the ass and terrible experience for you, and that you still haven't been able to get your shirts. That said, it is frankly quite crappy to imply by omission that they are still blocking CafePress. You should update your OP to include this.

I also fully agree on the principle of the matter, but again, as long as they aren't taking substantive action, or using your stuff without permission, its just a bunch of smoke.

This is likely a reason that EVE is one of the few games where members of the community can add art assets. A real slippery slope.