Cuusoo and The LEGO Movie

[jonwil]

Can someone find out what the rules are regarding Cuusoo and The LEGO Movie (i.e. using LEGO Movie parts in Cuusoo submissions or submitting LEGO Movie projects)?

[ultron32]

I know of none. I imagine there are none, excepting the general rules that go to all Cuusoo projects.

[Faefrost]

Can someone find out what the rules are regarding Cuusoo and The LEGO Movie (i.e. using LEGO Movie parts in Cuusoo submissions or submitting LEGO Movie projects)?

As long as they are real Lego parts there is no problem. The chances of a project based an in production internal theme or Lego owned license like Chima, Ninjago or TLM, passing CuuSoo review are fairly slim. But you never know. And there is nothing that would eliminate them from being considered.

[Dayton]

Just about everything for the movie was made to be sets, i was told by someone who works high up in Lego so i image that anything that could be made as a set will be.

[AndyC]

Anything along the lines of "Make X from the LEGO Movie" is probably a fail, it doesn't make sense for TLG to pay someone else for making something from their own designs. Something more unusual, say a Unikitty statuette or something, that TLG might not consider in the usual course of events, might do better however.

[rollermonkey]

I think as long as you stay away from using chewed up lollipop sticks as staves, or other real-world items in your project, and stick with all brick-built items, you should be OK.

:)

[Maniac4Legos]

Facebook just posted MetalBeard's Rules of the Sea

Images from The LEGO Movie. Sorry I didn't post them here, what do you want from me? Maybe later once I obtain them.

[Cult_Of_Skaro]

Just about everything for the movie was made to be sets, i was told by someone who works high up in Lego so i image that anything that could be made as a set will be.

There's a whole lot of stuff that doesn't seem to be on the radar as sets, and I doubt there'll be another wave. Like the Octan delivery truck, the flying coffee machine, the Overpriced Coffee place...

[Faefrost]

There's a whole lot of stuff that doesn't seem to be on the radar as sets, and I doubt there'll be another wave. Like the Octan delivery truck, the flying coffee machine, the Overpriced Coffee place...

I think the point is more everything that appears in the movie was specifically created as Lego designs. It's not like creating a Lego interpretation of the Batmobile or the BttF DeLorean. Lego already has created the design and plans for every single thing. Regardless of whether or not they produce them as sets. I'm thinking that gets problematic when proposing a design as an outside third party. They will not pay outside royalties for designs they already have on file in house.

[Lyichir]

I think the point is more everything that appears in the movie was specifically created as Lego designs. It's not like creating a Lego interpretation of the Batmobile or the BttF DeLorean. Lego already has created the design and plans for every single thing. Regardless of whether or not they produce them as sets. I'm thinking that gets problematic when proposing a design as an outside third party. They will not pay outside royalties for designs they already have on file in house.

You could conceivably create sets that aren't identical to things from the movie. For instance, the Sea Cow set never appeared as such in the movie itself (it only appeared at a much, much larger scale, and in microscale).

But it's true that if you submit a set design that's based strictly on a design from the movie, you're gonna have a bad time.

[Faefrost]

You could conceivably create sets that aren't identical to things from the movie. For instance, the Sea Cow set never appeared as such in the movie itself (it only appeared at a much, much larger scale, and in microscale).

But it's true that if you submit a set design that's based strictly on a design from the movie, you're gonna have a bad time.

The Lego movie falls into a very very strange area for something like CuuSoo. It is essentially a licensed property that happens to be owned by Lego. It's not like a normal internal theme property like Castle or City. It has clearly defined IP and more closely resembles a licensed property for how it behaves and the rules that probably surround it. Things like no licensed property will ever allow fan creation of new original subjects and characters, etc.

[Lyichir]

The Lego movie falls into a very very strange area for something like CuuSoo. It is essentially a licensed property that happens to be owned by Lego. It's not like a normal internal theme property like Castle or City. It has clearly defined IP and more closely resembles a licensed property for how it behaves and the rules that probably surround it. Things like no licensed property will ever allow fan creation of new original subjects and characters, etc.

I wasn't referring to creating your own original subjects that didn't appear in the movie, but rather to creating an original model of a subject from the movie. For instance, Batman's Batwing from the movie is massive and fragile—impractical for release as a set, in other words. But if you could create a smaller version that maintained a similar shape to the one in the movie (without copying the movie version brick-for-brick), I don't see a problem with that going on Cuusoo (besides the fact that Batman would make the set essentially doubly-licensed).

But there are plenty of other large models from the movie that could be redesigned and put on Cuusoo in such a way—the Dog, Lord Business's "mothership", Emmet's Apartment, and so forth. I personally have even considered doing so with Emmet's apartment, since trying to fit the much larger interior into the modular-building-sized exterior is quite an interesting challenge.

[Faefrost]

I wasn't referring to creating your own original subjects that didn't appear in the movie, but rather to creating an original model of a subject from the movie. For instance, Batman's Batwing from the movie is massive and fragile—impractical for release as a set, in other words. But if you could create a smaller version that maintained a similar shape to the one in the movie (without copying the movie version brick-for-brick), I don't see a problem with that going on Cuusoo (besides the fact that Batman would make the set essentially doubly-licensed).

But there are plenty of other large models from the movie that could be redesigned and put on Cuusoo in such a way—the Dog, Lord Business's "mothership", Emmet's Apartment, and so forth. I personally have even considered doing so with Emmet's apartment, since trying to fit the much larger interior into the modular-building-sized exterior is quite an interesting challenge.

Weirdly it might not be "doubly licensed" as Warner Bothers is a license holder for both. It would just be some sort of extension of one or the other existing licenses. And yes you certainly could create a project under CuuSoo. It would just bump into the same sort of pre existing license conflict that the Sandcrawler and the Tumbler projects hit at review. If anything the problem is substantially worse with TLM. A safe bet is that Lego will reject CuuSoo projects that involve licensed IP subjects that they have made before. At least in minifig or system scale. It doesn't matter if the new CuuSoo project is a new, different or better design, the prior art under the license exists to the licensed subject, and not the specifics of the set design itself. And the issue is pretty much everything that appears on screen in TLM probably qualifies as that prior design or prior art. It' goes well beyond GlenBrickers thoughts that almost anything from an existing Lego License will run afoul of inevitable discovery already covered under the contracts. With TLM because the entire movie is more or less validated Lego designs, outright owned by Lego as one of the primary IP holders, it isn't inevitable discovery, it's already prior art from the moment we first laid eyes on it.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Faefrost