This sounds like a "I want others to work for me but I want to reap the rewards" scenario to me.

Quote: Original post by wocky
Right, so once money + IP is involved, get a lawyer, if you haven't already.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the reply.

Because of another thread on another forum, I had occasion to re-visit my column at http://www.igda.org/columns/gamesgame/gamesgame_Nov07.php this morning. Perhaps this adds further perspective on my meaning:

"If you want to play the Games game, you gotta be prepared to play it right. Figure out a way to pay for a knowledgeable attorney. Bigger legal fees later on are the likely result of not spending any legal fees up front."

My attitude to the OP in this thread may have been further colored by my low opinion of the common thought that some idea that one had in the past is "the ultimate idea" and that one's hopes of striking it rich depend solely on being able to pursue that one past idea. Ideas are easy. Just get new ones, already!

And I love how the OP started off with the question being "hypothetical" but he clearly had a specific real case in mind.

Quote: Original post by Edward Ropple
This sounds like a "I want others to work for me but I want to reap the rewards" scenario to me.

Not really... I've been in this situation before too:

I joined a team that made a popular Mod for a shooter game, and years later I thought about funding a professional stand-alone version of the game.
However, there were dozens of contributors to the original Mod, which means the copyright was owned by dozens of people, which meant I couldn't go ahead with my commercial version without tracking down all of those people and either hiring them or buying their agreement.
Most of these people I didn't even really know, so it was impossible to find them all, so I had to heavily modify the project into a "spiritual successor" instead...