How To Judge Legal Risk When Making a Game Clone? 270

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 12, 2010 @05:07AM from the ask-a-lawye-oh-wait dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm an indie game developer making a clone of a rather obscure old game. Gameplay in my clone is very similar to the old game, and my clone even has a very similar name because I want to attract fans of the original. The original game has no trademark or software patent associated with it, and my clone isn't infringing on the original's copyright in any way (all the programming and artwork is original), but nevertheless I'm still worried about the possibility of running afoul of a look and feel lawsuit or something similar. How do I make sure I'm legally in the clear without hiring an expensive lawyer that my indie developer budget can't afford?"

Comment Re:I can guess why IBM was pushing for IEEE 754r (Score 1) 158

by systembug on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @12:17PM (#30366402) Attached to: ECMAScript Version 5 Approved

One should not forget that this time, Intel processors are not the only ones to be considerered. With the rise of the iPhone, RIM, and others, javascript performance on ARM is a serious issue.

Comment Re:I can guess why IBM was pushing for IEEE 754r (Score 2, Informative) 158

by systembug on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @11:45AM (#30365928) Attached to: ECMAScript Version 5 Approved

(...) I'm guessing that at best, 128 bit IEEE 754r performs about half the speed of 64bit IEEE 754, purely because of the data width.

According to Douglas Crockford "...it's literally hundreds of times slower than the current format.".

Submission + - ECMA script version 5 approved (h-online.com)

Submitted by systembug on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @07:43AM

systembug writes: After 10 years of waiting and some infighting, ECMA Script version 5 is finally out, approved by 19 of the 21 members of the ECMA Technical Committee 39. JSON is in, Intel and IBM dissented. IBM is obviously in disagreement with the decision against IEEE 754r, a floating point format for correct, but slow representation of decimal numbers, despite pleas by Yahoo's Douglas Crockford.

Comment Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat (Score 1) 254

by systembug on Monday June 08, 2009 @10:24AM (#28250759) Attached to: Unix Turns 40

Okay, I should not do this...

(...)
UNIX is like the Church which dragged society out of the enlightenment of Rome and into the dark ages, filling peoples' heads with superstition and making progress a dark taboo.
(...)

So what enlightend pre 70's operating systems are you referring to?
Some hints are apreciated.

And what is this stuff about Rome?
The good lawyers, bad mathematicians part?
The "nail every escaped and caught again slave to the cross" one?
The guys who institutetd christianity as state religion to save their sorry state from falling apart just to see it happen anyway?

Once again, some hints are apreciated.

Comment Re:What problem is this addressing? (Score 1) 1974

by systembug on Thursday October 06, 2005 @02:03PM (#13732537) Attached to: EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US

I could go as far as quoting a line in The Big Easy (1987, http://us.imdb.com/find?q=the%20big%20easy;s=tt): "You're not one of the good guys anymore", but, oh well.

It's all about trust, and yes, a war matters here: Waged against international law, and against the wishes of an international community. The US lost much credibility here. In the end, everyone only trusts in bodies he has had a hand in setting up. This is nothing new, but the war in Iraq surly sped things up.

Regarding the efficency of an future Internet Governance: Goof-ups will happen, but it will be an international communities own goof-ups or mishandlings, not the one of a single country. The case for erasing some countries TLD: You can bet it will be an as serious matter as declaring war: Not considered lightly.

As for foolish things like making illegal certain domain names: That is already happening, without much fuss from outside, with much help from western (US and European) IT-Firms. Why bother with international restrains against against global censorship, when you can do what you deem necessary in your own country? Even in the US library computers are censored. That's too bad, but not an argument against an international supervision of the transnational matters of the internet.

It will work like any other democracy: slowly and often with much bureaucratic infighting, but making sure the most stupid or radical ideas get thrown out.