Hi
Being a livery creator for simracing, I know how hard it can be to get the licence agreement from companies to use their logo. Most of (but far from all) are OK for personal use, but rarely they accept that we earn money on it.
Considering the liveries in MSFS cost money, how do I know they are legal? And that they will not suddenly be taken down and not possible to redownload because of a copyright infringement?
In eMotorsports, we have to provide written permission to use the logo as intended, or else the livery will not be shown in the streams on Twitch/YouTube. Do livery creators in MSFS have to provide something similar to Microsoft?
Do I send money to a black hole with no rights if the content get banned?
I would think the fact that Microsoft allows them on the Market means they’re fine. You could have a valid question, but I’ve never heard of there being a problem.
Now from another 3rd party market store? I dunno… If I was worried about it, I’d just use the in game market.
Good question. I would have surmised that in the case a livery pack gets pulled from the Marketplace due to legality issues, Microsoft would have to reimburse you and try to get the money back from the developer, since you have no direct contact with the developer and Microsoft gets the money from you directly.
However, due to that whole fishy “you don’t buy a product, but only buy tokens which you then exchange for products” loophole, there might be a case where the customer can make noone legally responsible in the end. Who knows. Guess there might be some U.S. corporate lawyers here in the forum who can answer that.
Honestly, i don’t think it woud be beneficial for the flightsim community do dive deeper into that topic.
I’m pretty sure it is a grey area, and the regulations will vary from country to country and depend on the individual circumstance. Buying from a known vendor for personal use I won’t consider it my reponsibilty to clarify the legal implications, but I won’t be sure about that either. It won’t hold me back from a purchase though.
If you take the thought further, you couldn’t buy any airport scenery, where some textures might most possibly contain IPR protected items, without consulting your lawyer beforehand.
So I’d suggest to drop the topic- just in case.
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I was thinking about the official store in game. Weird that neither Microsoft nor any of the livery creators answered, but it kind of tells a story that too.
Reading between the lines here, it seems we’re just one email away between Microsoft and a lawyer at SAS, Lufthansa or any of the other, and our money is lost.
I think I’ll just stick to the free liveries from other websites (or make it myself).
Thanks for the replies 
Merry Christmas 
Maybe sometimes airlines even think about what it would actually mean for their reputation when going after someone who created a livery for a game like MSFS. There is no reason to do this, you can even say it is free advertising the airline, no? Cost would be much higher than benefit in such a case so i see absolutely no reason for an airline to do anything against it…