As the fan vote phase of the You're The Final Piece contest has progressed, we've sadly had to disqualify one submission "Nature: The Deer".
We don't do so often and we don't do so lightly, and we often like to give members the benefit of the doubt. Despite the circumstances, we're confident that a lot of work and creativity was put into the submission by the creator whose submission we've unfortunately had to remove.
In the end, our thorough evaluation has been that the creation submitted was not entirely the creator's own work. In this regard, our contest rules are clear in stating that "You must be the original creator of all creative work you submit (the model, images, photographs, description text, etc.) and you must have the exclusive right to submit your model to this LEGO Ideas Contest. You may not submit a model or any other content made by, or on behalf of, someone else."
As a creative community, we love that you all inspire and help one another on a daily basis. It's truly incredible to witness every day. We believe that an open community can grow and generate even more creativity when fans can learn and develop their skills and creations with inspiration from each other.
But there's a fine, and tricky line, when it comes to intellectual property, where it's also our duty to protect creators and their work from being infringed upon, even in the grey zones of inspiration/derivation and co-incidental overlaps. This is particularly important for us in terms of creating a fair playing field, especially when competing for prizes, such as those offered in this contest.
While our moderation team often discover submissions not submitted by their original creators and manage to remove them before they are published to LEGO Ideas, we occasionally run into trickier situations. Therefore, we value you, the LEGO experts of the internet, to inform us, in order to help protect creators and keep the LEGO community open, sharing and thriving.
Plagiarism, co-incidental overlaps and inspiration are certainly big topics to unfold and discuss. We intend on addressing it and its importance in more depth in the future.
What happens next in regard to the contest?
As a result of this, two things will happen:
- The fan vote phase has been extended. It will now end on Tuesday, the 24th August at 11AM CET. So if you haven't voted already then now's your chance.
- Members who have voted for the disqualified submission will be informed that they have the opportunity to vote again on one of the remaining 39 submissions.
Naturally, extending the fan vote phase also means that other key dates of the contest move slightly as well. We intend to announce winners no later than the 8th of September.
By
hasanjensen