YouTuber lawyer discusses Epic Games emote lawsuits - FortniteINTEL

Epic Games has been tied up by lawsuits with rapper 2Milly, Alfonso Ribeiro, and The Backpack kid due to Fortnite’s in-game emotes.

Most Fortnite fans notice that the in-game emotes are based on popular dances from around pop culture.

Some of the dance creators are not tapping along with Epic as they are claiming that the development studio stole their dances and demand to be paid for their use.

The internet has gone into a debate over whether or not a single dance is covered by copyright law.

Popular YouTube attorney, Devon James from LegalEagle, dropped his two cents on the topic with a video covering the topic.

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The video dives back to the beginning of copyright law and explains that copyright specifically protects choreographies.

For instance, a user can not copy the entire dance from a Beyonce video, however, they can recreate a portion.

An example of this would be the popular hand gesture from Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video.

James went on to further explain that legally, attempting to apply copyright to a dance move would be similar to “trying to claim ownership over a note in a song”.

Even though the US attorney did not personally believe that the pop culture icons will win their cases, it does not mean they will not succeed.

A US judge appointed to the case will be the deciding factor in this issue, and there have been several lawsuits similar to these.

You can check out the video above to learn more about copyright law and the lawsuits Epic is involved in.

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