Roblox alleges Hong Kong toy company ripped off avatars to sell dolls

The complaint against WowWee, a Hong Kong-based toy company that originated in Canada, represents a foray into the expanding world of metaverse-born intellectual property rights. Roblox said it has registered a number of Classic Avatars as audiovisual works. — Photo by Oberon Copeland @veryinformed.com on Unsplash

Roblox Corp accused WowWee Group Ltd of copying its avatars from its Roblox platform to sell dolls and metaverse code, filing a copyright and trademark suit in federal California court.

Roblox said WowWee violated its terms of use and openly used the Roblox trademark to market its physical dolls as My Avastars, the complaint in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. WowWee also partnered with a Roblox developer to sell codes redeemable as metaverse visions of the infringing dolls for exclusive use on Roblox’s platform, it said.