Kind of an odd question.

[Loaym]

I hope this is the right place, er.

I wasn't sure it belonged on any of the other threads since it's not really a question about how to get published in the Times, so much as what being published means in itself.

That is to say.

Well, several of my pet characters on Neopets have "counterparts", so to speak, that are either humans or fantasy creatures in my original story set in a universe of my own creation. My pets were created based on these characters and have similar designs and stories, though "Neopia-ified": for example, in my own story, a certain character of mine is part of a mystery story in an underground city built by futuristic humans in my universe, and her Neopian counterpart is a Neopet living in Moltara. Several elements of her story, of course, are modified to fit comfortably into the Neopets universe, but she wears the same outfit, has the same name (I actually specifically stalked it in the purge because it was the name of my character), and follows a very similar development arc and series of events, as do the other characters involved in her story who have Neopian counterparts.

My question is, is it possible that publishing the "Neopets Version" of my story in the Neopian Times could cause legal issues if I were to ever officially publish my original version for profit? Does Neopets own the copyright to all characters and ideas, including characters created by users, that become published in the times in such a way that it would cause a problem if my original version, with absolutely no connection to the Neopets world in itself, were to become public?

I'm sorry if what I'm asking isn't clear enough, I'm having trouble phrasing it the way I want for some reason.

[Deleted]

I'm no expert in copyright law, so this is just my interpretation of things:

As far as IP rights, Neopets owns the rights to whatever creative content you submit to the site--nothing more and nothing less. They own, for example, hypothetical_times_author's Bob the Lupe and anything that gets written about his Lupe pack's adventures in the Endless Plains, but not her offsite creation Bob the wolf or anything that gets written about his wolf pack's adventures in the Fantasy Universe Fields. On a purely IP level, regardless of similarity, giving Neopets the rights to your on-site characters and stories does not give them the rights to your original characters and stories that your on-site content was based on.

Note the wording in the relevant rule: "By posting material on the Neopets Virtual Worlds or through the Neopets Virtual Worlds' functionality..." (emphasis mine) They only gain the rights to material you submit to them, not whatever you based the material on.

So your original stories and characters are still yours, no worries there.

As far as legal action, I find it highly unlikely, for two reasons, that Neopets (or, well, JumpStart I guess) would ever take action against a published writer whose original-universe works strongly resembled NT publications on grounds of copyright infringement.

First off, in spite of the "all content you submit is ours" rule - which they really only had to put in place to cover their backs from people seeking royalties for submitted content (which is why they stopped using user-submitted Neopet species designs early on) - TNT has shown quite the aversion to actually incorporating user-submitted content into site "canon". They themselves are quite the creative group of individuals, and it seems to me that they'd much rather let us do our thing and they do theirs rather than, say, trawl the NT for ideas for the next site plot. In fact, the only post-rule times I can think of that they've actually done something like that were when NT authors actively petitioned for user-submitted content to become site canon--like the white Weewoo project.

Secondly, to be frank, a published work resembling a previously-published NT work is going to look more like plagarism than copyright infringement. In fact, something similar happened a while back, when some unscrupulous person (not from the NTWF, mind you) lifted an assortment of stories from the NT and self-published them as an anthology on Amazon. Needless to say she was called out pretty quickly--but by people from this very forum, not Viacom's legal team.

The only way I could think of for you to circumvent this would be to mention on your author page or the like that you also wrote the Neopian Times stories that your books resemble--although even that's not foolproof and there's no way to tell if you were lying about that.

So I think in your case, you should be more concerned about misaccusations of plagarism later on.

[M is for Morphine]

Our License to Your Content/Intellectual Property. By uploading or otherwise submitting any materials to us and/or the Neopets Virtual Worlds, you (and your parents, if you're under age 18) automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) to us a perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials into any form, medium, or technology (now known or hereafter developed or devised) throughout the universe. In addition, you warrant that all so-called "moral rights" and other rights recognized throughout the world (including without limitation, the European Economic Community) in those materials have been waived.

It's also significant to note that the rights Neopets claims to your work are explicitly non-exclusive. So they can use it as much as they would like, but you are not prevented from also using it.

My legal concern comes from the other end. When self publishing on Amazon, there is an option to grant them exclusive print rights (for the first 3 or six months, I forget) for a greater share of royalties. If they find out the work is already published on another platform they might decide you've violated that agreement. though I imagine the two would have to be pretty darn similar. So you might want to read up on Amazon's polices and give that some extra consideration.

Normal 'not a lawyer' disclaimer here, lol.

[Loaym]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write your informative posts. Both of you helped clear up a ton for me.

I suppose it is true that TNT doesn't really care for using user-submitted content in their official material, which in general I think is most likely a good thing for both parties.

The point about being accused of plagiarism of one's own work is definitely something to keep in mind, I didn't think about how in reality it could be hard to prove that stories published in the NT under a certain username are in fact yours if it comes into question.

In this case I would actually be planning to create my original work as a visual novel/game rather than a written book, so I'm not sure if Amazon's publishing policies are extremely relevant, but it's something worth looking into in any case, I think, just in case. Thank you!