🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8711022101.AA16275@cory.Berkeley.EDU> dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>	Did you even get the trademark registered? No? Sorry.

It seems to me that there is, above every other argument that has been
presented here "justifying" the use of the name "Empire" for a PD
version of Walter Bright's game, a question of courtesy.  No one has
seriously disputed Mr. Bright's claim (which is pretty well documented),
that he is the original author of the Empire game in question.
Neither has anyone seriously disputed his additional claim that the
game was never intended to be public domain, and that the source code
was released accidentally.  Given this, it seems to me that writing
a clone of his Empire game and calling it "Empire" would be a major
act of discourtesy.  He has not been unreasonable about this, merely
protective, as I suspect anyone would be in a similar situation.

Besides, what's the point?  If someone comes out with a PD game called
Empire, it can only result in ill-will and confusion (the example of
the Empire game written by Peter Langston, which is vastly different
than Mr. Bright's Empire, is appropriate here - it is extremely hard,
when reading rec.games.empire, to distinguish the version of Empire
that is being talked about!).  IF someone writes their own version of
this game, THEN I would strongly suggest that they call it something
other than Empire.  Then those who wanted Mr. Bright's Empire game
could buy it, those who wanted the PD game could find it, no one would
be confused, and everybody would be, if not happy, then at least
satisfied.

-- 
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Michael J. Farren      "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
unisoft!gethen!farren   that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.arpa             Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"