Fortnite dance emote lawsuits set a precedent for media companies to abuse copyright law further and turn shared culture of dance moves into private property
Adi Robertson / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
In December 2018, Epic Games was hit with lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes that turned a novelty question into a legal one: are short, widely performed dance moves protectable works? The Verge's Adi Robertson argues the answer matters less for Epic than for what it licenses media companies to do next.
The counterweight arrived weeks before this column: the US Copyright Office refused to register the Carlton Dance, undercutting the performers' registration strategy even as their suits against Epic proceeded. Robertson's argument reads against that backdrop — the risk isn't that performers win, but that the legal machinery built for this fight gets repurposed by rights-holders with deeper catalogs.
First-order effects
- Epic Games must defend its emote catalog in court while the Copyright Office has already signaled skepticism about registering short social dances like the Carlton, leaving the performers' claims resting entirely on litigation rather than registration.
Second-order effects
- If any plaintiff wins, game publishers face a new licensing line item for emotes and a clearance burden on every dance they add; if Epic prevails, other media companies can still cite these suits as templates for asserting ownership over moves embedded in films, shows, and viral clips.
Third-order effects
- A pattern of successful claims would convert shared vernacular culture — dances anyone can perform — into private, licensable property, shifting choreography from a commons toward the clearance-driven model already applied to music sampling.
The trend: Short-form performance is becoming contested intellectual property, with game emotes serving as the first mass-market test of who owns a dance move.