1️⃣ The plaintiff is Kelley Heyer, the creator of the "viral apple dance." That's a dance she performed on TikTok and registered the copyright in.
(Yes, dances and emotes are copyrightable!)
2️⃣ "Roblox is the developer of the video game of the same name."
Ok, I'm going to guess that this attorney doesn't spend much time on Roblox if this is how they describe it. Not an auspicious start.
3️⃣ Now its getting interesting:
👉 the plaintiff alleges that Roblox was contracted by WMG/Atlantic, CharliXCX's label, to feature CharliXCX on Dress to Impress.
👉 Roblox then contacted the plaintiff to license her Apple Dance as an emote.
4️⃣ Ruh-roh! The plaintiff alleges that while in license negotiations with Roblox, Roblox released the Apple Dance emote for sale. But no license was ever finalized. Meaning, Roblox didn't have permission to use it!
💡 Slight tangent here. What's different about this copyright case, is that the Apple Dance appears to have actually been made and sold by Roblox, and not by a UGC creator.
💡That can be legally significant. In general, platforms like Roblox are immune from copyright liability for their users' actions, as long as they have a DMCA program. But this is probably different, since Roblox appears to have made and sold the dance itself.
5️⃣ Let's see... how much money is at stake here? The plaintiff alleges that Roblox made $123k in sales on the emote. So not a huge amount at stake.
6️⃣ The plaintiff has two claims: copyright infringement and unjust enrichment. Unjust enrichment basically means a party got something of value, without permission, and needs to give it up.
💡 Here's my wild guess about what happened: the timing of launching the dance was probably important. So Roblox released it while they were still negotiating and before the deal was struck. My guess is that this case will be quickly settled.
**As a reminder, these are the allegations in the complaint. I have no idea what actually happened!*
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