Hi,
I was wondering with the switch to only Lore vehicles if the same will be applied to custom vehicle sounds. Has anyone had experience with this or knows more.
Greetings Kai
I’m not a lawyer, but engine sounds are generally considered to not be registerable, at least in the United States.
If you do some google searches for Harley Davidson Engine trademark and “sound trademark” related cases, you’ll find that a couple large companies have attempted to trademark sounds, patterns of sounds, or engine sounds and either been denied or gave up on the attempt.
That wouldn’t extend to other sound recordings though like music/speech, but it would seem in the specific case of engine sounds you should be fine.
Adding to the above, while the sound is not copyrighted, the recording may be.
How the sound was recorded, any additional changes (tuning the audio), how it was published, etc could make it copyrighted.
Not a lawyer nor legal advice. You should seek an actual lawyer for legal questions
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At the end of the day, the question is fairly simple. Is the audio royalty free or something of your own making, if so, it’s fine. If you ripped it from another game or otherwise obtained it from another source, you shouldn’t use it.
As said above, it’s not the audio itself but the creation of the audio and the person/company who created the audio can protect it.