Oolite Bulletins

Quick question: what is the intellectual property status of the concepts and terminology of the Elite / Oolite games? For example, if you wrote a short story that made use of ship names, planets, that kind of thing — would you be allowed to sell it? Just for way, way future reference.

If it references *anything* to do with the original Elite game the answer is 'No'.

Cheers,

Drew.

OK. So, nothing a sophisticated search-and-replace function can't fix if I ever produce something worth a buck

It's a question of degree, really. If you wrote a short story about the pilot of a Cobra-class spaceship, trading around between the asteroid belt and Mars - if the only thing your story had in common with Elite was the broad concept of a spaceborne trader, and using a word found in any dictionary for a class of spaceship - then it's highly unlikely that there would be any problem with you selling it. If you wrote a short story about the pilot of a Cobra III spaceship, trading between Lave, Zaonce and Isinor, then that's clearly a derivative work of the original game, and selling it would be a bad idea.