Updates to the LEGO CUUSOO Terms of Service and Guidelines

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve made some key updates to our Guidelines, House Rules, and Terms of Service, which we have outlined in two earlier posts here. We’re making these changes to provide a foundation so we can continue building LEGO CUUSOO and help your projects succeed. Here we’ll walk you through the most significant changes. You also might want to review the entire Project Guidelines and House Rules so you are familiar with all of the changes.

Improving Project Quality
Many of the projects on LEGO CUUSOO are very high quality and we are amazed at the talent and creativity expressed here. We’re working to help increase quality on some of the lower quality projects as well. The new Guidelines, House Rules, and TOS are motivated in large part by the desire to build LEGO CUUSOO into a vibrant, creative community of high quality ideas that have strong potential to become LEGO products.

A Focus on Original Work
LEGO CUUSOO exists to allow you to share your original ideas and to help you make your LEGO wishes come true. LEGO builders of all ages put a lot of effort into their creations, and naturally take pride in them. It isn’t fair for you to upload someone else’s work as your own. Therefore, LEGO CUUSOO only allows users to create projects based on their own work, without exceptions.

Projects We Allow
Here are some details on the types of projects that are welcome on LEGO CUUSOO:

• Original Projects – If you submit an original idea that you conceived yourself, it reaches 10,000 supporters, and we opt to produce it, you will receive the standard 1% royalty.
• Projects Based on Third-Party Intellectual Property – We welcome projects based on third party intellectual property (such as movies or games). If one of these projects reaches 10,000 supporters, we will handle the necessary licensing arrangements (so don’t worry about that). Like any LEGO CUUSOO project, you must provide your own original model and cannot use anyone else’s work. If we produce a product based on your project and original model, you will still receive the 1% royalty.
• Theme-Based Projects – You are welcome to create projects to introduce a new LEGO theme or product line. (Note: We initially restricted these projects with the new Guidelines update, intending that such a rule would improve project quality by making projects more focused. However, we recognize the effort you are putting into projects like these and will instead work to help increase quality by offering our own tips and suggestions that will encourage others to support).
• New Part or Element Projects – It is difficult to quantify up-front how many kits in which a part will be sold, and over how many years. We’ve decided it makes more sense to compensate part designs with a one-time flat fee that we determine. That fee could vary, which is why we don’t define it up-front, but it will be fair and proportionate to what the royalty would be for a LEGO set project.

Removing “Bring Back” Projects
LEGO CUUSOO is designed for you to submit your own new and original ideas to be considered as potential LEGO products. Since “bring back” projects are links to retired products the LEGO Group owns, they aren’t original or new and aren’t appropriate for CUUSOO. We will be contacting owners of “bring back” projects and removing them over the course of the next week.

Protecting Our R&D Efforts
There’s naturally a possibility that you could post a Project without knowing the LEGO Company is already developing a similar product. Because our product development timelines span months and even years, we ask that you understand overlaps of this nature are unintentional on our part. By participating on LEGO CUUSOO you agree that if this happens, you will not claim infringement against us. In return, we promise you that we will not take this clause in the TOS and Guidelines as license to be opportunistic, and will respect instances where your projects predate our efforts.

Creating a Positive and Respectful Environment
LEGO CUUSOO is meant to be a fun and respectful atmosphere. We’ve established the House Rules so you can help us keep it that way. The House Rules have two important updates this week:

• Please keep your comments coherent. Refrain from using incomplete sentences, ALL CAPS, txtspeak, chatspeak, and the like. Respect other users by writing comments that are easy to understand.
• We don’t allow advertising, religious preaching, or political campaigning and we do not allow content that is intended to put down anyone else’s political or religious views. Also, LEGO CUUSOO is not a format for you to advertise your business, employer, or non-profit. For context and explanation, refer to the House Rules.

Shifting Gears
We’ve made these changes to provide a foundation to help your projects succeed. We believe the new Guidelines communicate more clearly the types of projects that we are looking for and provide a clear baseline from which we can encourage high quality ideas and curate content appropriately. Now that these updates to the Guidelines and Terms of Service are in place, we’re shifting gears toward helping you increase the quality of your projects and attract more supporters.

Happy building!