Couldn''t find a better forum for this so... Let''s say someone created a game that was based on a show from TV, or whatever (a cartoon, anime, etc), taking names, characters, etc etc. Maybe making some slight changes in the storyline or something, as they felt like it. Obviously if they sold this game the people who created the show would be pretty pissed off.... but what if it was total freeware? Not a dime made off of it... could they complain? I mean, it''s not like there''s any money to get from the creators by suing them, hehe. I think I once saw a freeware "Star Trek" game that was obviously based off of the show (maybe even the name too)... Any thoughts about this kind of thing? =========================================== As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -Albert Einstein

In court you would still be judged even if you gave out your game for free and you only had non-commercial interests. There is several reason why a case could go against you. First there is the actual copyright thing. For that you break the law for using (and distrbuting) something wihtout permission. Second, if the licence holder can show that he have earned less money because of your product ("why buy a full price star trek game when I can get one for free?") they may stand even better.

The question is if the licence holder would mind. A lot of companies know that fan material is just making the commercial products sell better so they don''t mind. This is the case with TSR for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons material. If you just make things free, avoid using logos, text and images then they don''t care what you do. Steve Jackson games (GURPS) on the other hand (and I ahve this from Steve Jackson himself in a mail I once sent him) does not accept any kind of computerprogram using GURPS even if it is free or not.

So the buttom line is: Will you product be a threat to the licence holder? If not, then nobody will do anything about it although it technically might be illegal to do.

Jacob Marner

Ok, theoretical question #2... what if there currently isn''t any games out that have anything to do with the show? It couldn''t be harmful to the creators then, right?

Also what if they went a step further and used music directly out of the show? (I can see this getting into a Napster discussion already...) I guess this would go in the same category with images? But would it really piss someone off enough to bring forth legal action? (Ok that last one is probably impossible to answer..)

I''m full of questions today, argh...

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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

-Albert Einstein

If you kept it free and made no money off it then usually the copyright holders would either let it go, or want you to stop, in which case you would get a "cease-and-desist" type notification. I doubt that you would get into any legal hot water without a warning first. But the best thing you can do is to get in contact with the copyright holder, explain to them what your doing (making sure they understand that its freeware, doesn''t pose a threat to their property, etc.) and hope that they are good enough folks to allow this sort of thing.

One reason they might not allow this has to do with the fact that a company can lose its properties to the public domain if it allows its properties to be used so much that it becomes entrenched. This isn''t a good enough technical exlanation on my part because even I don''t know all about it, but that might be one reason that you might have the copyright owner not wanting their properties used by anyone under any circumstance.

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- outRider -