Terms of content use

[Raestloz]

Yes, I'm serious about the "upload my ridiculous theme to BlackBerry App World" part, and I searched around for NBGI's policy for contents and found this:

5. Intellectual Property Rights


5.1 Content on the Services is owned by NAMCO BANDAI or NAMCO BANDAI’s third party licensors and is protected by United States and International copyright, trade dress, patent, and trademark laws, international conventions, and other laws protecting intellectual property and related proprietary rights. You may not copy or download any Content from a Service unless you are expressly authorized to do so.


5.2 You agree not to remove, obscure, or alter copyright, patent, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to Content. You may not to sell, license, distribute, copy, modify, publicly perform or display, transmit, publish, edit, adapt, create derivative works from, or otherwise make unauthorized use of Content. NAMCO BANDAI reserves all rights in NAMCO BANDAI owned and licensed Content that are not expressly granted to you in these Terms.


5.3 Making unauthorized copies of Content found on the Services may result in the termination of your account(s), prohibition on use of the Services, and further legal action. Content owners may take criminal or civil action against you for unauthorized use of intellectual property. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless NAMCO BANDAI from any unauthorized or illegal conduct by you, or through the use of your account, on the Services.

I, of course, know common sense, and expected this kind of thing.

Does this mean that, if I were to upload the thing for public use like to BlackBerry App World (or, for argument's sake, any other place like Android or iPhone's marketplace), I have to explicitly ask NBGI for permission of it?

If I do, where to?

[Scotty]

(This wouldn't be happening if you were doing this for Android) 

Are you going to do this for a profit or something?

I wish I could point you in the right direction, since I strongly believe in contacting the company itself when it comes to this sort of stuff, but yeah, can't.

[Cael K.]

Legally, I believe you are bound to do such.

Technically, I believe all derivative works are as such (including fan art). It's just companies know that it's generally a bad thing to not allow fans to be fans, so I don't think they really care as long as no profit's being made. You may be able to see what other people have done, if it matters to you, by browsing yourself and seeing if there's any similar things up. It may give you a feel for the uploading community.

Even in cases where profit is made, they may give some slack depending. You don't stop Comiket from happening, and I have yet to see an Artist's Alley raid, but that doesn't mean they won't issue cease and desists for other things. (In fact, they could if they wanted to, but we all know how that'll turn out.)

You honestly may be able to just pop it up without anyone caring at all, as you're not actively slandering them, you aren't making profit (I'm assuming), and you're doing it with the best of intentions. Alternatively, popping it up on the web is likely to not cause a stir, in my opinion.

(Not a lawyer.)

[Raestloz]

I won't be charging anything. It would be silly to charge for something that has copyright all over its face :p

What bothers me is the fact that not only do I use copyrighted images, I explicitly use the "THE iDOLM@STER MOBILE" logo. Images are one thing, logos are another, especially because the logo in question is being used as a product for something entirely different

Maybe I'll just go try uploading it. Well! If they DO notice, then at least it means NBGI is not just about fat presidents smoking with $100 bills screaming "screw it" every 5 minutes

[Sev]

I'd tell you to contact the company but I've searched far and wide and have only found a few numbers and all of them have automated systems with no options unless you "know your party's extension". I even tried calling one of their partner companies but to no luck.