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Unity Asset Store Package Has Been Disabled – Resolving DMCA Takedown

Getting a message that your package has been disabled from the Unity Asset Store is never fun. If it’s something you’ve worked hard on, it can even cause a bit of a panic (I did), but don’t worry. It isn’t over yet.

There can be several reasons your asset package can get taken down. Most are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll skip right to the big one: DMCA takedown.

In this article, I’ll go over my experience successfully resolving a DMCA takedown and how to best handle it. My resolution was successful without spending any money on legal advice and I believe this can often be the case, however, I do not guarantee similar results and nothing on this website is legal advice.

Note: this article assumes you haven’t copied someone else’s work. If you have, don’t do that. You can try removing the copied content and resubmitting or just take down the asset.

Parsing the Email

The main thing you’ll want to find out is what you’re accused of copying. There will be a line “in response to a notice from {person} claiming infringement of {asset}.” This may be as much information as you’re going to get.

If you’d like more details, follow up with an email to copyright at unity3d dot com to learn more information. They’re pretty helpful considering their legalese requirements. If you contact Unity support, they’ll just direct you to that email address anyway. In my case, I was told the claim was that the “software” without any particulars was copied. Your case may be different.

Next Steps

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do without escalating the situation. You could try contacting the individual alleging you copied their work. I didn’t as I believe the takedown was requested maliciously.

The next step after that is to submit a counter-notification by following the steps outline in Unity’s Copyright Policy.

(i) Countering Party’s physical or electronic signature – cheesy PDF signature is fine.
(ii) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled – id and links to your asset
(iii) A statement under penalty of perjury that Countering Party has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled – You’ll want this almost word for word.
(iv) Countering Party’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that Countering Party consents to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which Countering Party’s address is located, or if Countering Party’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which Unity may be found, and that Countering Party will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under 17 U.S.C. ยง 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA or an agent of such person – Again, the initial information and a word for word statement.

You can view the exact counter claim I submitted here: DMCACounterClaim

The resulting pdf should be emailed to copyright at unity3d dot com. At which point, they’ll send it to the person that complained and give them 10 business days to file a legal action as per DMCA. If they do not, your asset will be re-enabled at the end of that waiting period.

What About Next Time?

After dealing with this whole ordeal (and being off the asset store for 3 weeks), I was worried that the system was too easily abused (and the person who took me off could do it again). I asked about this and the Unity copyright team re-assured me that they do take abuse of the system seriously and abusers can have their accounts shutdown. The exact same claim cannot be made multiple times (by the same person) and claims regarding updates must specifically reference some part of that update. I’m reassured by that and will continue to do my best to provide quality assets to the Unity asset store.

Summary

If you receive a DMCA takedown and you’re sure it’s fake, you can create a counter claim document by following the steps outlined in Unity’s Copyright Policy and sent it to copyright at unity3d dot com. You can also view my exact claim for reference.

Disclaimer: The materials available at this web site are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.

If this article helped you out, you can check out my asset here:

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