NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jolt" data-source="post: 8363782" data-attributes="member: 18142">I do work for a patent/IP law firm.  First of all, let me say that "law" is very complex; that's why you have lawyers and firms making crazy amount of money.  Ownership law is particularly complex and very particular and "art" is it's own subsection of that.  This is the kind of contest that fans/fandom really shouldn't be doing.  Legal ownership requires very precise language; if you don't use that no agreement you make will be legally binding.This is the problematic part: "Though the entrants would all retain ownership of their design to use in any way they saw fit, including selling, printing, or reproducing, it also granted D&D Beyond rights to use submitted designs in the future."  Now, I don't know what the actual submission and/or contract language says, but that statement has all sorts of red flags.  First of all, when you create a piece of art, you own it and the rights to it.  Even if you sell or give away that piece of art, the creator still owns the rights to it.  Let's say that a company hires an artist to do art for their upcoming sci-fi board game.  Any art that artist provides can only be used for that specific game, for that specific company, for that specific run, and any promotional material relating to that.  Once any of that stops, the licensing ends.  You see, all the time, when a board game is being released by a different company, or by the same company after a period of being out of print, and the art has changed.  Gamers then cry foul, "Why did they change the art?  The old art was better!"  The answer to that is because they had to.  Art licenses do not transfer nor can they be maintained in perpetuity.  Can an agreement be made where the artist gives up those rights?  Short answer: no.Again, I haven't seen the actual language used nor do I know how D&D Beyond actually exists as an entity.  But what I have seen is a mess and is even worse if you consider that the contest winner may not have even been from the US (at which point international law comes into play as well).  Just because two people or entities agree on something doesn't mean that the agreement has any legal weight or merit.  Even a signed agreement means nothing if the law isn't being followed properly.</blockquote>

Verification