I'm not a lawyer but I'll give you my analysis of the situation. I don't work for Unity either, - I'm just starting up a company that is going to be using Unity as a development tool.
You should either contact Unity about this or raise the issue in their forums for them to respond.
Crisium wrote:Hi users,
can someone clarify the following for me. Unity3D eula states:
section 3:
"3) TITLE: You acknowledge that no title to the intellectual property in the Software is transferred to you. Title, ownership, rights, and intellectual property rights in and to the Software shall remain that of Unity Technologies A/S. The Software is protected by copyright and patent laws of the United States and international treaties"
eula can be seen here:
http://unity3d.com/unity/unity-end-user-license-3.x
does this mean that Unity3D owns all the IP rights to any game I make with Unity3D??
No. You have to go back to the start of the EULA where the terms in the contracts are defined:
"1) GRANT OF LICENSE:
Subject to the terms below (the 'Agreement'), Unity Technologies A/S hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and to use Unity or Unity Pro or Unity Educational (the 'Software')"
So when they refer to "the 'Software'" in the EULA, they're only referring to Unity/Unity Pro/Unity Educational and not to the software that you create using them. Unity owns all IP right to Unity/Unity Pro/Unity Educational, but not to your game.
(Unity does come with some standard assets; - I'm not sure whether Unity have given permission for other to use them or not. It gets complicated when you're dealing with stuff like textures, existing models, scripts etc).
A lot of (sem-)big companies are using Unity on the standard EULA and nothing has come up, so I reckon that their legal department have approved of it (or they have a special individual EULA for this; EA & Disney don't do standard EULAs).
also can anyone tell me if I can use the "Free" version to sell a game?
You can. However you have to purchase a Pro License when your revenue (not your profits) exceed US$100.000.
2) LICENSING RESTRICTIONS:
(a) Unity Pro may be licensed by any company, educational institution, incorporated entity, or individual.
(b) Unity (free version) may not be licensed and used by companies, educational institution or incorporated entities that had a turnover in excess of US$100,000 in their last fiscal year.
(c) Discounted academic versions of Unity or Unity Pro may only be licensed by educational institutions for use by their students and staff. The license is granted for learning purposes and may not be used for publishing commercial content.
(d) A company, educational institution, incorporated entity, or individual may not license both Unity Pro and Unity at the same time.
So the rules are:
You can make commercial games with the Unity (free version) and release them (2a)
If you make more then US$100.000 in revenue (
not profits), you have to get a Pro License (2b)
You are not allowed to use the academic version to make commercial games (you can make free demos and such) (2c)
If you use a Unity Pro-license in your company, you can't use any Unity (free) licenses. To save money, we were thinking about making a setup with Unity Free licenses and only use Unity Pro for the people that either needed the pro features and then integrate all the assets in their (Pro) editor. This would be a breech of the EULA (2d) as we would have both Unity Pro and Unity (free) licenses in the company.
So there....
A.
