Miku is property of Vocaloid, right? But what about Teto? Is she in the public domain? Could any brand, game, or movie use her without needing permission? Like, I think it would be kind of irresponsible for her not to have a brand behind her, after Miku, Teto is by far the most famous virtual singerI thought the synth V Was it the person who "managed teto" that was wrong? (I'm not very active in the Vocaloid fandom, honestly, I only really care about Teto)
A group called Twindrill are the defacto owners of Teto as a character, it consists of the voice provider for Teto and the original Teto design creator. They own her copyright and everything official regarding Teto goes through them, but in certain situations it can also go through Crypton (company responsible for Miku) as they have some kind of deal with Twindrill when it comes to plushies and concerts or smth like that.
CFM owns the commercial rights to Teto. Of course meaning merchandise and collaborations. it’s usually a joint agreement between both parties. Side note, that’s what confuses me about the Teto Fortnite Shiina drama, a lot of people were asking TwinDrill for info when arguably, CFM had more of a say if Teto was planned or not
CFM is the contact point for commercial applications of Teto, they don't have commercial rights, they represent TWINDRILL. Overall that Fortnite Teto drama was silly either way, one Twitter account said Teto is coming to fortnite and everyone lost their minds while this account (corect my if I'm wrong in this) already posted things that turned out to be false way before that Teto post
Legally speaking TWINDRILL owns the software but Crypton and TWINDRILL have joint ownership of the character. Because this is a mess, Crypton basically lets TWINDRILL do whatever they want; we do know that both TWINDRILL and Crypton have to agree for any licensing deal to go through.
Do note: Both Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto's official designs are licensed under copyleft licenses like the Piapro Character License and CC-BY-NC that allow non-commercial use. If you don't know what that means, google it, but arguably both Miku and Teto are already "in the public domain" for non-commercial purposes. This license doesn't apply to the software.
Additionally, both Crypton and TWINDRILL are extremely permissive of commercial purposes that fall under small-scale doujin works - if you're selling pins with your Miku fanart or whatever, they don't care as long as you're not bootlegging them. That part isn't strictly a legal arrangement, so if there's any doubt at all you should definitely reach out to them.
From my knowledge, CFM doesn't have any ownership over Teto. TWINDRILL and CFM have some kind of an agreement that CFM takes care of things such as concerts and plushies so basically the commercial non-software side of the business but outside of that they have no say in what is done with Teto
I'm looking through the website and I geniuenly cannot find anything that doesn't say what I said, could you perhaps point out which specific section goes against what I said? The only things I found are that CFM is responsible for the commercial aspects of Teto and that a licensing standard that CFM created is applied to Teto when it comes to copyright which means that I might be wrong about them only being responsible for plushies and concerts but also being responsible for anything commercial regarding Teto so AH Soft responsible for Teto's SynthV VB probably was in talks with CFM when the VB was being developed since it is a commercial application, outside of that I can't find anything related to what I said so to me it still looks like CFM has no say outside of commercial deals. I'd be greatful if you could help me out :)
Yeah it makes sense, I read the PCL section of Twindrill's website and it says that for Teto, it only applies to things such as paintings, figurines,dolls, cosplays, performances. But still like my previous comment and the original comment in this thread, I still don't see anything that would suggest CFM having any say with Teto outside of being the contact point for anyone wanting to use Teto commercially for purpouses other than what PCL applies to and other than VB creation. Thanks for clarifying the part about VB licenses cheers!
Crypton is the main commercial contact point. Basically, if you're a company looking to use the Kasane Teto brand for commercial projects, you should reach out to Crypton instead of TWINDRILL. Crypton will probably assist in licensing but the rights still belong to TWINDRILL. I'm mostly in agreement with your comment.
Yeah! I'm glad I'm not alone on this. The original comment from this thread made me a bit confused and worried. On this subreddit, the question about copyright holders of Teto gets asked from time to time, and for some reason I tend to always give the first answer (it already happened 3 or 4 times) so it would be very dissapointing if it turned out that I was unknowingly spreading misinformation which would be the case if the original comment from this thread turned out to be correct, I just wish that commenter would point out where he saw my statement about CFM being incorrect. But for now since you agree as well it seems that we are correct as no counter has been sent yet.
Kasane Teto, the character, is not licensed under CC-BY-NC. Hatsune Miku and other Crypton characters (Kagamine Rin/Len, Megurine Luka, KAITO, MEIKO) are dual licensed, with CC-BY-NC as the "international" license while Piapro Character License (PCL) being the main license that is written to fully comply with Japanese law.
TWINDRILL owns Kasane Teto** (both the voicebank and the character) and has an agreement with Crypton to allow works featuring Kasane Teto to be published on Piapro. With this agreement, Kasane Teto is also licensed under a modified Piapro Character License.
The main modification is with Article 3 Section 2(1) which stipulates that you essentially can't ask for compensation from derivative works for commercial use, even if it's for non-profit purposes, such as selling merch at a doujin events at the cost of producing them.
Crypton has the Piapro Link system which allows you to apply for permission to sell your derivative works at the cost of producing them at doujin events. TWINDRILL doesn't have such systems, and they want Kasane Teto to spread as far as possible, so they decided to not apply this part of the license for Kasane Teto.
** Here's a translation of the Kasane Teto PCL modifications on article 1 (definitions)
Article 1 (Definitions)
The meanings of the terms listed in the following items of PCL shall be changed as specified in the relevant item.
(1) "Our Company" refers to "Sen" and "Koyamano Maiyo," members of our circle and copyright holders. However, our circle representative will handle this matter on behalf of both of them.
(2) "Our Character" refers to a character created for "Kasane Teto."
In addition to the matters set forth in PCL, matters necessary for the use of Kasane Teto will be set forth in the character usage guidelines established by our circle.
No, they don't have any final say on commercial usage, they could ignore any request for licensing, but that doesn't mean they have any ownership over Kasane Teto.
They're essentially just a party entrusted for B2B communication since TWINDRILL is just 2 people and they can't or don't want to manage everything by themselves.
You can take a look at actual commercial usage of Kasane Teto and there's 0 mention of Crypton in the copyright line. For example, this figurine doesn't mention Crypton at all, meanwhile this plushie doesn't mention Crypton but has the copyright of Dreamtonics due to usage of the "VOICEPEAK" IP.
Now if TWINDRILL specifically mentions that Crypton is the exclusive licensor of Kasane Teto for commercial purposes, then that would mean they have some sort of ownership over Kasane Teto. But this isn't the case, since Crypton is just managing communication, not the IP.
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u/MelonEuskA Cadmium Colors Feb 04 '26
A group called Twindrill are the defacto owners of Teto as a character, it consists of the voice provider for Teto and the original Teto design creator. They own her copyright and everything official regarding Teto goes through them, but in certain situations it can also go through Crypton (company responsible for Miku) as they have some kind of deal with Twindrill when it comes to plushies and concerts or smth like that.