Car models on the Asset Store and licensing

Hello everybody! Hope that I've chosen right thread for this question.

I'm building a mobile game with cars in it so I'm going to buy some models on the Asset Store. As I understood from the Asset Store Terms of Service and EULA everything that I bought on the Asset Store I can freely use in my commercial game. But the problem is that almost all car models on the Asset Store have been designed from real world cars. Modellers just cut out labels from it.

So if I buy these models and use it in my game, will it be legal? Could any of car brands have questions to me? And will Unity Licensing protect me from any claims?

Thank you.

 

I wouldn't even attempt to try using some copies of vehicles, which reassembles known brands.

Stripping labels does not protects you from anything.

While chances are rather low, to affect you, since your game probably wont get famous anytime soon. But lets hypothetically say, you managed to start earning millions. Chances are now, you will need deal with car companies. Either app take down, forced to remove cars, buy licenses, or sued for made brand damage. Or any mix of such.

Imagine you remove vehicle, that players love to play in your game. Now chances are, you loose players, if cars start disappear. Providing app is stil active.

By th time however, you may went smart route and replaced them much earlier, with custom cars models.

Which could be much easier from very start.

 

Ok, I see, that's what I'm afraid of. But why are these models being sold on the Asset Store? In theory if I buy these models here then I would have a license to use it, wouldn't I?

 

You maybe don't have permission to use car, by selects brand. But some devs may have licensed permission to use brands in game. Then where model is acquired is less relevant.

So technically while you can download anything from asset store, you need explicitly check, if you have permission to use it. Either is a brand, or ripped textures, models, sounds from other assets/games; or if is genuine, original work.
This is can be hard part. And may involve legals.

If you have prove of rips, by asset maker, then can report for take down. It is best you can do, after taking own initiative to validate. I wouldn't take asset maker word for 100 %.

 

This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.

Do your own due diligence. If a model resembles a real world car, stay away from it in order to protect yourself. Even if you were to use something similar to a real world car in a way that constitutes "fair use", that is a defense that you only get to make in the courtroom and at great expense.

Buying from the Asset Store does not protect you from anything. There is nothing in any of the agreements with Unity's Asset Store where they guarantee they have 100% confirmed the person posting the asset has all rights to all parts of the asset. It would simply be impossible for Unity to do so. They make the asset developer state they have all rights, but that doesn't stop issues any more than Steam's requiring the same thing has stopped a few games getting posted on Steam which were violating copyright in part or in whole.

As a perfect example, a "developer" posted a car on the Unity Asset Store which was 100% the Batmobile from the movies. It somehow made it past Unity's review process. Multiple people pointed it out to Unity, who then took it down from the Asset Store. If you had put that in your game, Warner Brothers would have been quite right to be upset. (Or whichever legal entity owns the actual copyright on the design of the Batmobile.) Unity would have most likely owed you a refund on the purchase price of the asset, but that is all.

So if you can look at a model and think, "Yep, that's a Camero," then you know you should also be finding a different model to use.


This question has come up on the Unity forums multiple times. The thought I always have for the person asking is: Why not just sidestep the whole problem entirely and go with very fictional cars? Make them more science fiction styled, or go steampunk, or something else entirely. Then you won't have to worry so much that the models are too close to real vehicles.

Though I'd still start by doing a reverse image search before buying the model, just in case.

 

Thank you for your opinions, this is exactly what I was asking of. Anyway I'm going to have a lawyer's consultancy today because I was searching for this information yesterday and there are very different opinions about this topic.

The answer is simple: a very important part in any car game is cars. People play it because they want to drive cars which they can't drive in real life. That's it.

 

There are some, which will love to drive real world cars, but then they expect to feel same performance as real cars, that's real fans/hobbyists.

Many, if not most, won't care about weather car ever existed, as long drives and does fun stuff.

Imagine Mario, or Lego racing cars. Driving part is fun, not that they are realistic, or even reassemble anything existing.

Focus on mechanics and getting game into the world, then be concern about models.

 

You need a lawyer.

The issues are copyright and trademark laws. Car design is copyrighted and if you duplicate a real world car, company behind it may raise a stink. Trademark is their logo, and if you're using their car and it's actual name, the company behind it will feel compelled to defend their trademark and ensure that in no way the end user can assume that you're associated with the company. They're required to defend their trademark, as far as I know.

There are exceptions called fair use, which mean that you can use trademarked names in common speech and copyrighted object can be used for parody and news reporting, but the thing is, this is still would need to be decided by the court and fair use is largely US-only concept.

Like @Antypodish said, a decent rule of the thumb is - if you can look at the model and say, this is a BMW/Mercedes/whatever XYZ, you have a problem. Even if they're "inspired by", they should not be instantly recognizable.

Real life examples:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/battlefield-helicopters-video-games-280148
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons