Member Discussions

Are there any legal consequences for cloning the look and feel of an existing MUD, but not cloning any of the content? Fwiw, the old MUD in question hasn't seen any meaningful development in several years and the community has been dying a slow painful death. The new clone has been written from scratch in a new language based on the knowledge of the community and without seeing any of the original source.

Any thoughts?

Well there are always potential legal consequences regardless of how "clean" you think your MajorMud clone might be. It really depends on how clean they think it be as to whether they bug you about it.

Based on the facts as you state them, no. An original work is an original work. Look and feel of a mud is formatting and organization- that is not protectable. Now if you begin to copy characters, settings, etc., that is a different matter. Unless of course those characters, settings, etc. are not protectable (such as public domain stuff). OTOH, re-interpretations of PD stuff could be protectable (don't you just love complex issues?).

A similar case involves the yellow pages. A rival publisher had made a competing index and the yellow pages sued claiming the alphabetical arrangements etc. were protected. Result? Look at all the phone book versions made today.

Practically, if the mud is increasingly inactive, they probably wouldn't notice even if you were an infringer with a full code rip and few MUDs have the resources to do anything about it anyway.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I've gone to great lengths to replicate the same colors, the same game mechanics, even the same character creation screen (with ansi), but I don't plan on using any of the original content (ie. npcs, maps, unique items or spells, etc.).

That being said, I have designed it in such a way that if someone were to get a hold of the original content and convert it to the new format, once inside the realm it would literally be indistinguishable from the original. I'm fairly certain this *will* happen the instant we release it, but I can't be held liable for the content people choose to use with this engine, can I?

from Vitoc:

<quote>
That being said, I have designed it in such a way that if someone were to get a hold of the original content and convert it to the new format, once inside the realm it would literally be indistinguishable from the original. I'm fairly certain this *will* happen the instant we release it, but I can't be held liable for the content people choose to use with this engine, can I?
</endquote>

No, unless it occured on a mud you run, or you do it yourself. If you release your mud code, and someone else downloads it and sets up a mud and adds in proprietary stuff, they are liable, not you. It'd be like holding Intel liable for someone running a pirated version of MS Office on a machine with a Pentium chip in it. Wouldn't fly.