(Here is the announcement from the developer center)

If you suspect someone has copied your content without your permission, then you do have rights as well as US, EU and other International laws that are within your arsenal to help protect your property.

Reallusion takes great care in doing a thorough check of all content submitted by CCDs in order to make sure they fulfill both qualitative and legal standards. However, with the amount of content submitted to us and the various content that exists, some may pass our radar without us realizing that it is indeed a fraudulent copy  of another parties' work.

Reallusion cannot protect your content on 3rd party stores. These stores are independently managed and always separate from Reallusion. If you sell content on a 3rd  party store, and someone else has copied your content and sold altered versions on the Reallusion Content Store without your approval, then there is no way for Reallusion to verify this.

Therefore, it is up to the developers to be diligent enough to protect themselves. This short guide will provide a reference of how to protect your content, but in no way does it replace good legal advice from a professional lawyer.

Index:
Background, Special Documents
Content Being Sold on Reallusion Content Store
Content Being Sold on a 3rd Party Site
If Reallusion suspects fraudulent content

Background, Special Documents

There are two legally binding documents that will protect CCD content from abusive infringement. The first is the CCD Agreement, which all CCD members must read and agree to.
https://file.reallusion.com/ccd/Reallusion_CCD_Agreement.pdf

On page 2, General Terms section, under the paragraph titled - Ownership, it states:
The Vendor (CCD) retains all ownership of the copyrights and all other rights to content, subject to the non-exclusive rights granted to REALLUSION under this agreement. The Vendor is free to grant similar rights to others during and after the term of this agreement.
AND
On page 3, General Terms section, under the paragraph titled - Representations and Warranties, sub paragraph 1, it states:
the Content is the Vendors original work for which the Vendor possesses copyright to distribute;

Therefore, if a suspected CCD member is found to be infringing on your work, and has breached the CCD Agreement, then you have the right to defend your content by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Content Being Sold on Reallusion Content Store
If you have provided content to the Reallusion Content Store, and another Certified Content Developer has, without your permission, copied your content, made alterations, and sold that content on the Reallusion Content Store, then you can do the following:
1)Contact Reallusion at developer@reallusion.com
1.Provide evidence:
   1-1.Detailed screen shots of the suspected content being sold in the Reallusion Content Store
   1-2.Screen shots of marketing materials that display the suspected content (if applicable)
   1-3.Provide a project with the original and the suspected altered content within the same scene
   1-4.Request that the infringed Content be suspended

2)Contact Suspected Perpetrator:
1.Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DCMA) you have rights:
   1-1.Notification of a Take Down- you need to notify the suspected perpetrator to take down the content until the issue is resolved.
   1-2.The issue is between you and the suspected perpetrator. You can seek legal advice on how to enforce DCMA.
  1-3.Note: Reallusion cannot act on your behalf, nor act as an Arbitrator between two or more developers. You must seek the legal authorities within the Californian legal system to arbitrate or enforce the law

Content Being Sold on a 3rd Party Site
If you have provided content to the Reallusion Content Store, and another Certified Content Developer has, without your permission, copied your content, made alterations, and sold that content on the 3rd Party Site, then you can do the following:
1)Contact Store Owner
1. Provide evidence:
    1-1. Detailed screen shots of the suspected content being sold in the Content Store
    1-2. Screen shots of marketing materials that display the suspected content (if applicable)
    1-3.Provide a project with the original and the suspected altered content within the same scene
    1-4.Request that the infringed Content be suspended

2)Contact  Suspected Perpetrator:
1.Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DCMA) you have rights:
   1-1.Notification of Take Down- you need to notify the suspected perpetrator to take down the content until the issue is resolved.
   1-2.The issue is between you and the suspected perpetrator. You can seek legal advice on how to enforce DCMA.
   1-3.Note: Reallusion cannot act on your behalf, nor act as an Arbitrator between two or more developers. You must seek the legal authorities within the Californian legal system to arbitrate or enforce the law
If Reallusion suspects fraudulent content

Reallusion handles all suspected content case by case. If it is confirmed that the original author is Reallusion, then Reallusion will follow the stipulations of the DMCA to protect Reallusion's rights.

Under the CCD Agreement, on page 2, General Terms section, under the paragraph titled - Termination, it states:
REALLUSION reserves the right to terminate this agreement between REALLUSION and the Vendor at any time without notice. This agreement may be terminated at any time by either party upon written notice via email or regular mail.
AND
On page 3, General Terms section, under the paragraph titled - Representations and Warranties, sub paragraph 6, it states:
All factual assertions that the Vendor has made and will make to REALLUSION are true and complete. The Vendor agrees to indemnify and hold REALLUSION and our Members harmless from any and all damages and costs, including reasonable attorney's fees, arising out of/or related to your breach of the representations and warranties described in this section.

If Reallusion suspects a CCD member is in breach of the contract, Reallusion may, but not limited to, discontinue that content pack, discontinue CCD relationship, change profit share with prior notification to CCD or a combination of the preceding actions.

If you believe your content is in jeopardy, take the necessary steps to protect your rights and content. If you have questions, please feel free to contact developer@reallusion.com

______________________________________________________

Visconti
Forum Moderator

Reallusion, Inc.
https://forum.reallusion.com

This is an excellent and thorough post Visconti, and I for one applaude Reallusion for making it. There is nothing wrong with individuals benefitting monetarily from selling their own content, so long as it is their own content. I'm sure based on the emails and PM's that I've received in the last several weeks, that there are many other content developers that are appreciative of the relevance of this post. Let's all work together to maintain the integrity of our community.

WOLF'S TRADING POST IS OPEN COME IN FOR A VISIT

"May you one day see what my eyes have seen...and be better for it" - Wolf
www.wolfzonedigital.com

Hear, Hear!

sjonesdc

STILL LEARNING!!!

Very glad to see this post. There are things that go on that are not always in the light of day. Perhaps posts like this will start to shed some light in those dark areas.


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I LIVE to anymate, irritate and machinamate. Not necessarily in that order.

Alright, so I have a few questions here. Just how much does a project have to change, in order to be classified as different? For example, there are tons of commonly found objects in google 3d warehouse, including vehicles, but when you import them into Iclone, they look like crap. In order to sell a product on the Reallusion website, could a person download an object from there, entirely rework the textures on their own, change the color scheme, and add animations to it, and then sell it here? Or would the entire thing have to be created from scratch?

GP

I've been talking about Fair Use, so I feel obligated "to put my money where my mouth is," and try to make a few suggestions.

Note that I think it will quite challenging for anyone to answer this question, but whatever Reallusion says about it is likely to be a better response than mine will be. In any event, even if their answer isn't better than mine, this is their Marketplace and we will all follow their rules without exception.

Now, in the first place, over at 3D Warehouse, the creators aren't expecting a penny of profit from their models. So far so good. But they still have the right to control copies of their work being used by others when it exceeds personal use on the download machine, even though these rights are very seldom explicitly addressed on 3D Warehouse pages. One of the forum members said he thought we should write to the creator and ask permission to redistribute a model, and that certainly strikes me as fundamentally sound.

The principle of Fair Use suggests that the more original work you invest into a borrowed work, the more you have a right to profit from it. In a related fashion, the smaller your "sample" of the work, the safer you are, in analogy to sampling a very few seconds of music. For instance, you could isolate the headlamp from an existing car model and insert it into a new car model and feel pretty safe, because it's a small relatively proportion of the original work.

It also seems to me that adding an entirely new functionality to an artwork allows a whole new class of users the ability to make use of the artwork. If you enable fantastic animations in iClone that aren't possible to Sketchup users, you've done something valuable. I would send the animated prop to the original modeler and encourage him to play with it in a free version of iClone.

If this strikes you as a grey answer rather than a black-and-white answer, the conclusion is that there are degrees of safety, and your job is to invest the effort to stay firmly on the bright white side of grey, not the dark black side.

...Now let's see what the real answer is!

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

eloquently stated Pau!!

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"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu

In response to Paumanok West, I agree with your points of "Fair Use", they seem logical to me. I find that a lot of work can go into modifying Google Warehouse objects to look suitable in Iclone.

I as well wonder what Reallusion's answer will be.

@sw00000p - I created a vertex and have it under strict copyright!!

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"To define Tao is to defile it" - Lao Tzu

Great post, I would like to ask some questions. I been starting to make my own contents for iclone and really want to put my content on the content store and be a certified developer.

for faces, i scan and cut out real people's faces to use as texture, I mix and match eyes, noses, and lips. blend them together in photoshop and use iclone in tool to create the 3d face for iclone, is this consider original work by me?

for cloth, i take picture of actual cloth and fabric that i found laying around to use as texture, sometimes i scan from magazine and poster. i mix them and blend them together in photoshop. is this consider original work of mine by reallusion standard?

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