I want to make a BeamMart skin (walmart mixed with beamng drive) and I want to know if there are no issues of copyright when I make this skin. Will there be any copyright issues?
Spoiler: Short Answer It's complicated, but it should be approved for the repository and likely won't hurt BeamNG. Spoiler: Long Answer Copyright law is subjective, ill-defined, and varies strongly from nation to nation. Moreover, this in particular probably falls under trademark law since what you're parodying is the symbolism and typography of a corporate entity and/or its divisions, rather than the intellectual property used in its products. Generally, the rule is that, 1. if the visual appearance of the design matches that of the potential plaintiff's, such that there can be plausible confusion between the two, it is an infringement. 2. There also usually must be an overlap in the industries between the two parties, though extreme examples violating rule 1 can still be deemed an infringement. It's a gray area as to whether a fictional object in a video game created to be in the same industry as the plaintiff can qualify as an overlap of industry. Of course, since copyright and trademark law is purely handled in civil court, it's likely that Wal-Mart won't seek damages. Any potential damages gained in such a lawsuit would barely cover the courtroom fees, and would pale in comparison to the PR damages of suing a well-liked independent game developer or especially one of their users.
