App Trillionaires: How To Become An App Developer: Enjoy Life, Make Money, and Live Your Dreams! (2013)

7. APP ROYALTIES AND COPYRIGHTS

In this part we are going to go over several important definitions that you should know when it comes to app development and copyright laws. For more detailed descriptions you can always ask a lawyer for exact legalities surrounding your app as what we discuss here is a very basic overview.

ROYALTY FREE

If a person creates a work such as an image texture, a sound or a musical piece, they own the copyrights to that work. If you want to have the rights to use that work, you would talk to the original creator and pay them a FEE to use their work EVERY TIME the work was used. For example in a radio station, every time a song is played, the original artist would receive a royalty for the song being played. That is what a ROYALTY is in basic terms.

Royalty Free is being able to USE that same work AS MANY TIMES without having to pay any more ROYALTY to the original work creator. This you can think of as an unlimited usage license to use their work in your creations for personal or commercial use depending on how they have defined that usage.

This does not however give you any form of ownership on the creation of the copyrighted material. For example, you may buy yourself an iPad to use, however you are not the one who created the iPad. For this UNLIMITED/ROYALTY-FREE usage, you would usually pay an UPFRONT fee. Sometimes you can get royalty-free items for free as well.

When it comes to the world of software and apps, before you launch an app publicly you must make sure that you have obtained the Royalty-Free rights to use the IMAGES and SOUNDS that are incorporated into that very app.

This is very important because if in the future you have a HIT app and are using any copyrighted material inside of your app of which you have not obtained the Royalty-Free license to do so or own the copyrights yourself, you could end up being sued for damages.

Many times we may outsource our development to other developers or to artists without thinking about such things. Just because you have paid a developer for their TIME to create an app does not necessarily mean that you have paid for the usage rights of any images/sounds they may have used in your app.

Example—You hire Company XYZ from Overseas. Company XYZ is in a country that does not worry about Copyright or Digital Copying laws and so they simply find images through an Image search online and find sounds from various sources without worrying about the rights. Your app comes back and you have an image of a popular Movie Star with music in the background from a 1990’s rock group. If you have NOT obtained the rights to use this content, you CAN and WILL be held liable.

OK So where do I get Royalty-Free items from that I can give to developers or use in my own apps?

Website 1. SoundSnap.com (http://www.soundsnap.com)

SoundSnap is a great resource for finding Royalty-Free sounds. You simply pay a fee of $9, $29 or one of their set fees, and you can gain access to various sounds ROYALTY-FREE. This is a great way to get music and sounds into your apps, from button clicks to entire Rock Ballads. SoundSnap is a great source of Royalty-Free material.

Website 2. CGTextures.com (http://www.cgtextures.com)

CGTextures is a great resource for FREE ROYALTY-FREE Textures and images which can be used commercially in your apps. The only stipulation is that you may not use the images to sell individually or to do any form of scrapbooking (please read the terms for more details). As for your apps this is a great site to gather ROYALTY-FREE images such as Clouds, Forests, Oceans and More!

TIP: Always research the terms and conditions of any websites you are planning to gain Royalty-Free items from. For your app development needs you need to have commercial usage royalty-free items.

“Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”

— St. Augustine