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Owning and distributing MAME itself is legal in most countries, as it is merely an emulator. Companies such as Sony have attempted in court to prevent emulators from being sold, but they have been ultimately unsuccessful.[14] MAME itself has thus far not been the subject of any court cases.

However, most arcade games are still covered by copyright. While it is arguably legal to transfer the data contained in ROM chips from a board you own to a personal computer, both downloading from and distributing ROMs on the Internet without permission from copyright holders is a violation of copyright laws.

Some copyright holders have been indecisive regarding making licensed arcade game ROMs available to the public. For example, in 2003 Atari made MAME-compatible ROMs for 27 of its arcade games available through the internet site Star ROMs. However, by 2006 that decision had been reversed, and the ROMs are no longer being sold there. At one point, various Capcom games were sold with the HotRod arcade joystick manufactured by Hanaho, but this arrangement was discontinued as well.

Other copyright holders have released games which are no longer commercially viable free of charge to the public. Alien Arena, Gridlee, Looping, Robby Roto, Super Tank and a number of early games by Exidy (Car Polo, Circus, Crash, Fax, Fire One, Hard Hat, Rip Cord, Robot Bowl, Side Trak, Spectar, Star Fire, Targ, Teeter Torture, Top Gunner and Victory) have been released by their copyright holders under non-commercial licenses. These games may be downloaded legally from the official MAME web site.[15] The Spanish arcade game developer Gaelco has also released World Rally for non-commercial use on their website.[16]