What is an excellent game to play on the Open Pandora?


not trying to argue but to understand.....

isnt the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY more then just the code? isnt it also the look of the game as well as the names of characters etc??

companies have sued for things looking too close to their product.. logos too similar etc.

oolite has all the original ideas, 8 galaxies of 256 stars the same names of stars ,the same commander name. yes there are improvements and the ability to add user modsbut fundamentally its the same game just different code.

i mean i dont want anything to happen to oolite i just wonder how close something has to be to be an infringment on the IP.
 
"Intellectual Property" is a misleading notion because it is an umbrella term for all kinds of legislation, none of which are actual property in the material sense. Copyright, licenses, trademarks, patents, they all work in completely different ways so it is very confusing to think about them as one and the same thing ("IP") which you can "infringe".

Code and game assets are copyrighted by default, because authors/artists get the copyright whether they want it or not. Copyright only talks about (verbatim) copies, not things like remakes, parodies, covers, etc.

Patents can be used to protect against "copying the abstract idea, not the concrete implementation". But while software patents are (sadly) allowed, you still can't patent a plot or a game concept afaik. It would be surprising to me if there are specific patents involved here.

Trademarks are probably not relevant here.
 
If they'd copied the ship meshes out of Elite, that would be copyright infringement, pure and simple. Making similar-looking ships yourself isn't though, and snake names are public domain, obviously.


For logos it's somewhat different, as _wb_ says, since most logos are registered as trademarks, and there are rules about passing yourself off. The logos for elite seem to be the gold crested shield common to all 8-bit conversions and the original box art, and the slanted saturn image used as the main screen in the original and on the box art for Frontier. Oolite doesn't seem to use those.
 
thanks. i had confused Ip and copyright/trademarking.

but as a plus i just read on another forum that oolite has been ported to the pandora.... yesterday 27-4-2014( for future readers.... lol )
 
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