I was talking with a person in the game industry last night. He warned that there are companies that would be glad to download our work, finish off the game and sell it. With things Star Trek heating up and a desire to get out before Star Trek Online it may have already happened.

Our only defense is to make the game so bad that no one will want it. I will do my part and only make junky models from here on.

or a good lawyer (and notary to make sure we were the original author) to get some "injury award" (what a word , I mean simple compensation for having broken copyright laws)

btw. what's with the star trek license costs to publish such a game? I heard Bethesda's old trek license was rather cheap and may even be dropped by now. Considering we do "the old trek", it might actually happen the way this guy said...

It's worrying that something like this is possible, but the length of these forums' existence and the fact that Mike owns the Sharepoint site and StarTrekSupremacy.com might act in our favour - it would certainly show that we've been developing the content for years. And as much of a blow it would be to us if this did take place, it would still serve our interests; a completed BOTF-style game would be released, which is exactly what we've been campaigning for for almost a decade.

that's the positive side of it.

the copyright thing is in fact a little tricky since US copyright allows automatic transfer of copyrights and copyrighted work (the built-up content over the years) to the original owner of the intellectual property (at least I think it does, but this knowledge is already starting to fade away, I was into this last year but never since). That would mean a legal swoop-away of all the work. Although I think the IP-independent code work should still be copyrighted by Mike alone but could be taken away potentially by compensations for having broken the Star Trek IP (essentially the same argumentation that led us to drop trek last year, I mean who of us could afford to lead court battles with the big guys, we'd have to agree to something at some point and that could include dropping of all charges in exchange for the code and all rights to the game). But if the company does not reveal its (finished) code afterwards, go try and prove your code is part of the framework (Mike would need to implement easter eggs only he knows which somehow include his name specifically and which are encrypted somehow in the essential parts of the code so nobody finds them there).

Ooh I could just imagine pressing some button combination and have some video start playing of Mike declaring his ownership of the game.

It appears that things Star Trek really are becoming hot again. He suggested that a number of companies would like to get something out before Star Trek Online. Getting license from CBS Paramount would not be an issue for a real company. Going commercial might be the best thing for Mike and Supremacy at this point as well. I would not mind if he could land a good deal. We could even end up advising on the project. Just a name in the credits would make me happy.

Same here, but the chances of my name being in the game are less likely than for you. I haven't really produced anything myself, most of my work is in the game presentation and implementation rather than it being a shiny model or something that has my name on it. And I doubt a big company would allow the USS Moe in the game.

The problem is the current unfinished status of the game. On the http://www.botf2.com/supremacy site Mike says something about 20% although this seems like just not being updated since the crash and the old backup reinstatement. On codeplex mike has given the supremacy download a version 0.42 tag. Going commercial thus requires additional coders which I think is not that cheap to realize. But asking CBS/Paramount directly might not be a bad idea after all since Supremacy is already on a CBS-owned site, namely Gamespot.com .

How about a Ferengi ship named after you, MoE, the FMS Matress maybe?

MOE, a general manager like you always gets billing over an artsy grunt like me.

A company wanting to get to market before ST Online would dump coders on the game. In this market they would be easy to find if not already working for XYZ Games Unlimited.

They would need to dump modelers on it as well though. I have permission to use the ships downloaded for a free game. There would be a lot of model work or a new shiplist or both.

Problem with copyrights in the game code is that the copyright in the US pretty much covers the literal code. The function the code performs is difficult to copyright and is limited to the very specific thing it does, so making some alterations that achieve the same result is a way around copyrights in programs such as games (generally a patent is better on code, but obtaining one takes a while and costs a lot more). This is still not quite a settled area of US law, but after a case called Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc. (2d Circuit Court of Appeals, 982 F.2d 693, 1992) a lot of copyright case law tended not to afford computer software very much copyright protection, and require a lot "slavish copying" in order to find infringement. There is a three step process after that case for computer programs that goes through abstraction, filtration, and then comparison, but most software code doesn't survive to comparison and it would be easy to copyright what a lot of different software does and would severely restrict the ability to create new software (this case was meant to ease restrictions that limited smaller companies or open source due to overreaching by copyright holders in software).

The US Supreme Court also hasn't been to keen on the "sweat of the brow" argument, where information obtained through labor is "stolen" and used by another, but the information is otherwise publicly available (Feist v Rural Telephone 499 US 340, 1991). It is still worthwhile to give notice of copyrights in the code, because depending on how much of the work is copied by a potential infringer some of it may survive their analysis to be compared for similarity and infringement.

What really protects games is the copyright in the art and story, which in this case are owned by paramount. Even the new ships and art made by people here (which btw I think is totally awesome), are derivative works (based on a copyrighted work) that are still substantially similar to Star Trek, which Viacom/CBS/Paramount own. It would be difficult to argue they are not related to or based on trek considering the new models are for trek races and a trek game, so you can't claim copyrights in the art created for this game.

Depending on which Circuit Court in the US you are in, the GUI is generally a separate protected work, but again the trek aspects of the GUI here would likely not be protected as they are derivative works (they look like LCARS), but generally a court will require that GUI's as a whole would have to be nearly identical to infringe.

So where does that leave Supremacy and other Trek fan games? Pretty much sitting in the wind, hoping that A) The copyright holder doesn't order the makers of the fan game to stop or worse sues them (unlikely with Paramount and fan games historically speaking, unless there is a product that a game would directly undercut) and B) No one steals the game and sells it as there own (Mike and everyone should keep putting up copyright notices as to the code ie, Supremacy Code © Mike Strobel; along with copyright and trademark notices for paramount ie © CBS Studios Inc., all rights reserved. Star Trek is a trademark of CBS Paramount.) This helps to ward of some potential pirates.

Its just really hard to protect a work that itself has no copyright protection (unlicensed use of Star Trek art/images/derivative works) or has very little protection (Game Code/interface made by Mike or others). Keeping the game crappy is one solution (obviously more of a joke solution than a real one), but really keeping it unknown to the public or game makers/publishers is the only real way, but that defeats the purpose of making the game. The game is in a market that is not very popular at the moment, as turn based strategy games have certainly gone down in popularity in the last decade, but with Star Trek online coming out who knows what a game company would do in the current economic climate. I am not sure how to go about obtaining a license from CBS/Paramount, or if they would even be interested. They seem to turn an intentional blind eye to fan games, but a well crafted and well programmed one might catch their attention, however that may not be good . A good game that is highly popular would interfere with their potential to earn money on their copyrighted work (because they didn't license the game and aren't making money off of it) so they may not appreciate it if the game becomes popular (of course they could have the opposite reaction think its great and hope it sparks more interest in their officially licensed games and products, but thats probably wishful thinking).

If I have time I will try to research protecting software code, particularly game code, so Mike's coding, and the efforts of everyone who worked on the game and related games so far can have some protection from infringement or theft.

LOL, I would worry for the company that stole my code , it would highlight desperate times though .

Regards Wolfe

I guess if you change genre (noticed that Supremacy is "stored" under "Action" in gamespot? look at the url) it becomes even easier to avoid charges. Plus the "boring" turn-based is out of the box text later on. Action sells much better. Plus a little strategy part, perfect. Much like Star Trek Conquest, only for PC. And there is action, with the 3D combat part.

I don't think turned based games are boring at all, I love them, but Mal you are right there will be action in this game thanks to cdrwolfe! I would hope recent attempts at 3d action games based on Star Trek would prevent any company from stealing your work Wolfe because I think its awesome so far (considering you are doing it in your spare time!).

"boring" in the meaning of "not as interesting" to many FPS or casual gamers (the often-stressed "majority" of gamers). I don't find tbs games boring either, that's why I'm here .

Good point with hinting on recent ST game attempts. One can only hope they learn from their mistakes. But maybe they think the tbs part was lacking or not good enough at those games..?

Yes, as long as we can have real time action in the combat engine it will be fin.

Well they could dl mikes source and finish it, but they would not be able to charge for it as it is open source and so they would be in breach of the gnu licence, be some what ironic should that happen

the gnu license allows commercial distribution so far, that you can charge a fee needed to cover the expenses of distributing the software. Via that backdoor, a clever attorney might make a case here (I mean who actually can pinpoint the costs down in the end), but it's rather far-fetched I admit .

The other thing is if they deny having taken the code and reprogram it superficially so that no one recognizes the similarity on the outside. If they don't open-source their code afterwards it might be a tough case to prove the code was at some point Mike's code. During the process of finishing it they sure have enough time to smudge the tracks .

Smudge it yes, but the only way to erase it would be to start from scratch...so why steal the code? Besides, Mike could still ask the court for <insert evil company name here> to provide a copy of their code to compare to his own as evidence. An independant programmer could even be used to compare the code, and the court could impose orders to ensure anything provided could not be revealed to other parties out of court. If said company were to refuse to provide the code, it certainly wouldn't look good on their part.

I guess so. But Kenneth's words above have made me thinking..what if those companies are just hazarding the consequences. Although, there's also CBS who has to grant them a license so there's one big instance that might prevent such an abuse. It certainly would look bad on their part if they allow a game to be sold without checking their own gamespot site for potential rival and/or equal games. When doing so they sure get to the question if that Supremacy game could potentially be the same as the one such a company is proposing.

Problem is that if a hypothetical company gets a license to use Trek trademarks and copyrights (for art/story/names) it would be really hard to defend a similar or identical fan game that has no license. Defending the code by itself would be hard generally, unless the offending code was really really similar.

My guess is that a hypothetical company that wanted to steal a game code, it would know enough to change the code around and the game around enough that its sufficiently dissimilar so as not infringe on copyrights of the code (Matress brought up the point of why even steal the code, which I tend to agree with, there is danger in outright copying anything literally and can be counter productive, but they are more likely to look at how the code works and recreate the ideas to make their own code, or copy only small portions of code which are mostly generic).

I think the biggest worry is not that the code is stolen, which is possible, but that a company sees the idea of a turn based game and manages to get a license from CBS/Paramount to use Star Trek art/story in that game. This would then put that commercial game, even if totally independently coded, in direct conflict with similar fan games, such as Supremacy. This is when a copyright holder would seek to enforce those copyrights and trademarks, because then they have a potential loss in profits. Of course this would also probably depend on the copyright holder as seeing the fan game as a threat to their market (this may not be the case).

Even if you can protect the code from being used, CBS can still make its own version of a TBS game AND prohibit fan games from using Trek content. The dynamics of the game are obviously important, and if you are a programmer protecting what you create is very important especially if you have created an interesting and popular game dynamic, but in terms of a Trek version of such a game there is no defense from CBS if they decide to shut fan game down.

If you get to keep your code, but are told by CBS not to use Trek in it, best you can do is make a game that is more fun than whatever commercial one is made (just because they steal your code doesn't mean you can't keep using it and make it more fun to play, just couldn't use trek).

What I think would anger CBS more is not a fan game (I think they actually like fan games or understand that their commercial base of fans likes them), I think that what would anger CBS is if a commercial company starting selling a game as their own without a license for content.

well, if the "output", i.e. the actual game later on, of such a company-driven development would be "better" than Bethesda's last tbs attempt (ST:Conquest) then I'd say, yeah, let's have those guys take over the idea and finish the program. A "true" botf2 is always better than a fan-made, simply because it's legal and reaches every potential gamer (in computer stores for example). Something we cannot or are likely not to achieve with a game that gets no written permission from the license holder (note, even Star Trek Phase II or New Voyages does not have anything written down so they cannot put video dvds in stores but only serve internet downloads (although I haven't checked that if they got DVDs on the market..)).

That companies sell it and make profit by using trek content illegally seems less a problem for us. I mean which computer store would buy an unlicensed game? That would resolve in only internet downloads and those would become public and known to CBS also very quickly. I don't think a serious company with a serious attempt to produce a trek tbs game that we really want to play (something unlike ST:Conquest for example) would take that risk.

What might happen is that they create a non-trek version out of such a code-base and make trek a mod (like Space Empires or SoaSE, etc.) and have that as a selling argument. But then they'd need their own set of ship models and race graphics first which seems expensive to realize in the first place.

One possibility is a game company taking on Mike and his work in progress to finish it and sell. What I would like for those of use here would be a role as consultants / advisors. We could watch the progress, make suggestions and possibly continue to contribute. I would like us to be able to stay together and still think we were part of the team.

The whole thing seams improbable and it is more likely that we will continue to creep along for a few more years until the game is done or some catastrophic event shuts us down.

In the mean time many companies will turn out a number of games of variable quality over the span of the new star trek popularity fad.

I'll take 120k a year to be a consultant and read forums.

Seriously though, this thought has occurred to me as well. If a game company wants to produce a game like Supremacy to the point where it's Supremacy's sibling, might as well just hire the author. Although... considering the open-source/free software nature of the licenses for the game, I'm curious if the codebase for Supremacy can even be used for commercial purposes at this point, even if a company were to hire Mike to develop it. I'd imagine a lot of the code would have to be refactored anyways.

But I'm not a lawyer.

hmm interseting $_$

no really they would have to ask our aproval right !!!

I mean they have to ask me too I have the originals for the art work and they can't steal that I think !!

I'm no expert and all I wish for is to WORK in the gaming industry having credit will be AWSOME of course .....
I think if this "random event" happened they would have to ask permetion of every one who has contrebuted to the game so far no matter how small the contrebution was
and for me finishing BOTF 2 will be reward enough and if some huge company likes our work and dicided to offer me a job and pay me 100 k $ a year I won't say no


nahh I think ur safe... don't worry