Corporate ownership of TT

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 31 Jul 2003 02:32

Is this a business inquiry, such as his employment agency would be interested in? No.
I haven't tried to contact Chris Sawyer, and I don't intend to. I think it would be more likely to lead to trouble than help. If somebody on this board has contacted Chris Sawyer in the past and got on with him, then they can contact him again and ask. Otherwise I recommend we leave it alone.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 31 Jul 2003 10:02

I think we never should leave it ....
We should bother and bother about it until it will be abandonware (or better open source, maybe even gpl) ... we can remind him that game is selling nearly nowhere now, and noone is planning to release it, so why couldn't it go abandoware, also I'm stick with that CS has got his own copy of source code (and he could sell it, or give, he won't do with it anything but for us it will be blessing)

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 31 Jul 2003 12:23

OK, go ahead and ask him I suppose.

I agree, almost certainly he saved a copy of the code. BUT, he does not have the legal right to offer it to the open source people, or to pronounce the game abandonware. He doesn't own it. He may have some residual rights in it, but he doesn't own it free and clear. Atari (probably) does. You can't give away what you don't own, and Atari, as with most owners of intellectual property, wants to be a dog-in-the-manger - that is, they don't care that they cannot or do not wish to do anything with the program, they don't want anybody else to either.

ShadowUser · Post by **ShadowUser** » 31 Jul 2003 17:59

Im with u dude...i think?

Flavius · Post by **Flavius** » 31 Jul 2003 19:15

I think the most important thing is no money is being made out of our activities on TTD. We are just irritants to CS and others.

However if we create the game via entirely different code we may be legally ok, there is a precedent. The different versions of DOS that came out after MSDOS did the same job but used different code

But the images produced by the new code i need to think more about

.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 31 Jul 2003 20:55

Yes, you could rewrite the game using different code.
You'd also have to use different graphics. For the vehicles that's no trouble, we've replaced them anyway, but you'd need to get everything else also.
You'd also have to call it something else.
And, you'd have to use different music and sounds, which might be more inconvenient than you'd think.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 31 Jul 2003 20:58

no ... if they use only grfcodec to decode graphic then they can create an alternative raod to laod GRF files and so TTD files) without using new files, and without breaking coprights

(only EXE, create from the beginning to the end, in that case they will not create anything illegal)

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 01 Aug 2003 01:59

Hmm. I'm not sure about that, but OK.
Well, as a practical matter, I imagine that nobody will care unless you start selling it, which isn't likely.

Flavius · Post by **Flavius** » 02 Aug 2003 00:00

The parties we see on tv news arguing, are about interlectual property, images and audio. Someone is making money out of anothers artistic property without permission. This is not the case with us. We are adding to and improving TTD purely for the pleasure and satisfaction, and not for profit!
But we need to accept that we will never have greater ownership of TTD than CS, Atari and others, even though they do not know who owns it.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 02 Aug 2003 07:35

and we always can say we tried to contact with TTD owners ... but it fail

Stoney3K · Post by **Stoney3K** » 14 Aug 2003 21:14

SHADOW-XIII wrote:no ... if they use only grfcodec to decode graphic then they can create an alternative raod to laod GRF files and so TTD files) without using new files, and without breaking coprights (only EXE, create from the beginning to the end, in that case they will not create anything illegal)

You're wrong there my friend...
The graphics were also designed by someone on CS's team and thus are also copyrighted. So is the music and so is the sound. Factually, if you make anything LIKE TT(d) you risk getting sued 'coz you may have stolen the idea...

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 14 Aug 2003 22:43

OK, let me try to clarify this a little.
1.) No matter who owns TTD, we know it isn't us.
2.) The trademarks and copyrights would indeed cover the game, all graphics within it, and quite possibly any game that was clearly a clone of it. Reuse of any of these things would technically violate copyright.

Now, that's what the law says. However,
1.) I spoke with the presumed owners of TTD, Atari. They said that they were not sure that they did in fact own the game, and that the game was so old that it wasn't worth their time to even find out if they owned it. Thus, if they don't consider it even worth the bother to figure out if they own it or not, it also follows that they wouldn't bother suing anybody.
2.) Even though reusing the graphics and cloning the game would technically be illegal, as a practical matter such a lawsuit would be difficult to win because a.) no money is being made, and b.) the game isn't available for sale even to somobody who wants to pay for a legal copy. There aren't any financial damages (no money being made, none being lost).
3.) The development "team" as such is spread across a number of European and East European countries. None of them have any money to speak of, as far as I know. As a corporate attorney, is it really worth your while to get into a multileveled international lawsuit, over a game that you don't even bother to sell anymore, with people who have no money? Your supervisor would throw you out of his office if you suggested it. Yes, they might want to make a point, but in so doing the PR would be just terrible. Kind of like what RIAA has accomplished by suing end-users of downloaded music files (much more clearly illegal) - there is NO sympathy for them in the general public at all.

In short, Not Gonna Happen. Technically you are correct, but in practice it's pretty much a nonissue.

dizcon · Post by **dizcon** » 18 Aug 2003 16:10

have been in contact with a person from Atari/Infogrames Nordic (Norway), and he forwarded the request to their office in Sweden, and asked me to wait for them to contact US headquarters. my guess: nothing will happen

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 18 Aug 2003 19:55

Almost certainly nothing will happen, as I already talked to the man in charge of really old games at Atari HQ, and he said it wasn't worth his time. Doesn't hurt to try though.

Flavius · Post by **Flavius** » 19 Aug 2003 01:42

The more opportunity we have to play and improve our beloved game the better. The Patch, Empire or cloned new game. I am convinced Empire is going to be completed but the clone is still, well jury is still out.

Petae · Post by **Petae** » 19 Aug 2003 10:17

Nobody will sue anybody (I hope), but it's very likely that we wont get the source code, hehe...

Just keep nagging him...

on the other hand, if he knows ppl are interested and he's a sadist, he won't even make it abadon where...
So that means we gotta lay low... wich we won't...

ehhmm...

whatever.....

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 Aug 2003 13:32

We aren't going to get the source code from any official source. And even if we did, I don't know how helpful it would be, my understanding is that the game is written in a very complex fashion in several languages. It's kind of multi-layered. Rewriting a clone would be more practical.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 12 Oct 2003 21:53

If Atari doesn't know they own it and don't care then why not clone it? they woulden't bother doing anything because companies only bother if they know they own it.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 12 Oct 2003 21:56

By the way you might still want to change the name so if someone that works there heard of the game then you will have a problem.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 13 Oct 2003 01:22

Agreed. No sense in borrowing trouble. But I think they would only care if it started making money.

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