
The developers already know this, and have accepted the risks. The best we know is that Atari will not sue at the moment. However, whether this will change with the release of Locomotion is another thing. If Loco is a flop, more people may join this fine community, and Atari get jealous. They get jealous, they find out they own copyright. They own copyright, they sue their butts off. The developers already know this, and are confident enough that it won't happen in the near future, and the original design right expires within the next year (10 years to day of the first copies of TTD going on sale). Atari may be happy with it, and might even give their approval, but there ALWAYS remains teh possibility of action, even if it is remote.
We all know it's a problem, and the developers are happy to carry on. Discussion about legality is not going ot change that, but remember that it is illegal. It is an improved experience in different ways to TTDPatch, and I'll be playing around with it some more later, but it's still illegal.