Comment by btown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btown | Hacker News Reader

The legal status of this is fascinating. Essentially, it's blessed in a series of email by Bethesda, as long as the OpenMW team doesn't explicitly promote its use on mobile platforms - with the understanding, of course, that as a cross-platform open-source engine, it could certainly be used for that purpose. Bethesda had every reason to find legal ways to shut down the project (it's quite the opposite of a clean-room implementation), but they worked to find a happy medium that allowed the project to coexist with its own mobile ambitions.

https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Bethesda_Emails

But it's certainly unclear in the general case whether engines that require the user to provide their own (presumably legally purchased) data files are derivative works of the original engine. It's even more iffy when, as is the case for https://pokemmo.eu/ , it might be illegal in certain jurisdictions to obtain a ROM even if you have purchased the physical product. Of course the creators protect themselves legally, but is it ethical for a software product to effectively encourage users to break a law that is itself unethical?

(IANAL)

> Bethesda had every reason to find legal ways to shut down the project

Except it drives sales of a still $15 game. And sales of the sequels. And they don't have to do any work.

They have more reasons to help it at this point.

I think the Elder Scrolls series usually target high end gamers that are interested in a very immersive experience featuring cutting edge graphics. In that regard, many players moved on to Skyrim, and Bethesda may not perceive OpenMW as a competitor.

I'm unclear as to why Bethesda would have any standing in this regard. If people wrote their own reimplementation of a game but simply required assets from the original game to be on the client machines, my feeling is that Bethesda doesn't own anything with respect to the reimplementation. That was entirely coded by someone else.

As long as assets are not shipped with the project, no trademarks are used by the project, and no original code from the original binary or implementation were used, the reimplementation is an entirely new product not owned by Bethesda.

That would be allowable for a clean-room implementation, but OpenMW is not. So while OpenMW is protected from any copyright claim, it would not be protected from any patent claims.

Can you describe how OpenMW is not a cleanroom implementation? I couldn't find anything on it on the website.

I read through the emails, and I believe I'm mistaken: nothing is specified on whether or not OpenMW is a cleanroom implementation.

My point stands, though. If Bethesda can show that OpenMW was in any way borne from reverse-engineering their engine code, and that their code was patented, then they would have an IP claim against OpenMW.

So what's the difference between this and the whole Mojang 'scrolls' debacle? Seems pretty strange Bethesda would let this fly compared to simply naming your name Scrolls.

They are required to defend trademark, just to keep it.

Presumably there is no attempt by the open source devs to trademark their work.

Trademark versus copyright.

Also, my guess is that a court would reject the idea that you could trademark as common a word as "scrolls," and Mojang simply conceded to avoid a costly legal battle.

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