Star Trek Rights-CBS

posted on November 21st, 2010, 2:18 am

Hey me and cyrax were talking about the source code today and while investigating i found that CBS bought the star trek franchise from paramount in 2006 if you go to star trek online or memory alpha you will see that they are trademarked to cbs.  I then noticed that fleetops is trademarked to paramount, so my question is, should this be changed?

Then i wanted to ask the question,

#1 having the source code would make things easier right?

#2 seeing as activision is now activision blizzard, mad doc is rockstar new england, and cbs now has the star trek rights, plus the fact that star trek armada 2 is 9 years old 4 days ago, wouldnt it be easier to get the source code or other things to help the mod?

posted on November 21st, 2010, 4:44 am

haha you think that having that many lawyers makes things easier.

posted on November 21st, 2010, 5:10 am

They'll still reply 'no you cant has, we may make monies from it still'.

Look at Legacy, it used parts of the A2 engine, complete with .odf files.

But at least they dont sue over mods like they used to, not as much anyway.

posted on November 21st, 2010, 10:20 am

paramount still has the film and dvd distribution rights.

regardless of who owns the rights to armada 2's source code, they are not gonna give the source code out as it doesnt benefit them.

posted on November 21st, 2010, 10:43 am

Tho some developers do release the source code due to just time/age in general; not due to if it benefits them or not.  I know Parallax/Interplay did it with Descent and possibly Descent II?  Thats the 'bigger' game I can recall someone doing such a thing.

Psi-

posted on November 21st, 2010, 11:12 am

Probably the nicest source code release i can think of was the Freespace 2 release by Volition. This has resulted in the Freespace 2 Source Code Project, which has really turned into an amazing modern-like game 

posted on November 21st, 2010, 6:13 pm

Well, i see what you are saying, all i guess i was wondering is have the devs inquired about this since these companies and rights changed hands.

MOST importantly, the main thing i wanted to bring up the fact that i believe the devs need to change the tm from paramount to cbs, which is something important, however, i do not know all that legal jumbo, i do know that cbs has the rights to the star trek franchise

posted on November 21st, 2010, 8:55 pm

I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the source code would be more difficult to obtain now that the original companies involved have gone their separate ways. The rights to Star Trek are CBS, but the game had elements which are owned by two other entities. So, you would really need to get all three in a room together and convince them all to hand over the code. And that there's something in it for them. And pray that they don't sue you, squabble with each other, or demand the mod be taken down.

I think we should feel lucky that no one has made a stir so far. I haven't heard of any lawsuits over mods, but the C&C community alone has lost two popular mods over the last decade because of the threat of a suit. It would be great to have free and clear access to the source code for everyone, but unfortunately corporations don't think like the rest of us.

I hope I don't send negative here, because that's not my intent at all. It's just that this has been thought of before, many times. Less than a week ago I was thinking something a lot along the same lines as your post, and I was also curbed by a reminder of the nature of corporations, lawyers, and other such evil.

posted on November 21st, 2010, 9:28 pm

Probably the nicest source code release i can think of was the Freespace 2 release by Volition. This has resulted in the Freespace 2 Source Code Project, which has really turned into an amazing modern-like game 

aye, Freespace2 is so far the best sci-fi sim which i know and the source code project made it even better.

posted on November 21st, 2010, 9:49 pm

well first of all cbs or paramound have nothing to do with the source code only the content that will be used on the game engine...... and blizzard is a much more civilian friendly company so it may be worth looking into. the devs are not making money off this so i dont think there is a legal problem .....unless cbs were to say no ....in that case they could shut down fleet ops 6 years ago. but as for the source code itself that belongs to blizzard now.

posted on November 26th, 2010, 5:22 am

And pray that they don't sue you, squabble with each other, or demand the mod be taken down.

It's next to impossible to shut a mod down these days, that said I almost wish they WOULD attempt to stop modding of trek games, not cause I hate mods but because the ensuing fan backlash and general lulz and drama would be chucklesome.

I remember back in the mid 90s there was some game microsoft was involved in, and there were some mods out that basicly just edited text files, and microsoft tried to sue over it, because editing that text file could result in the trial version becoming the full version. End result was that they just made the mods more popular, as the news got out the word of the easy way to crack the trial, and when a year later they DID track down one of the moders (who had never stopped working on the mod) they lost the lawsuit and ended up having to pay damages and such.

To be honest, I dont see any A2 mod getting sued unless it's distributed with a no-CD patch, the closest I could see to getting sued would be maybe the KA2 mod, as its installer installs most of the game directory structure, premodded, but requires you paste in stuff like the .exe on your own, under the assumption that if you have a legit copy you'll have the missing files, and even that would be hard to sue for as basicly all of the content is modded, and a fair attempt to not make it easy to crack was made.

The best case of a mod lawsuit I ever saw was over a mod for the early 90s game X-Wing. Guy I served with in the army had done some small mod for it, and Lucasarts threatend to sue him over it if he didnt take it down. His reply was that he would consider doing so, if they proved noone in their company had non-factory authorized modifications to their cars. they never replied to him.

posted on November 26th, 2010, 6:21 am

It can still be done. Only a few years ago there was a Star Wars-themed mod in the works for Command and Conquer: Generals. LucasArts caught wind, and in true Lucas fashion, threw a fit and threatened a suit if the mod wasn't taken down. The modders complied. Could they have possibly ignored Lucasarts, fought the suit and been found in their favor, with all court costs paid by LucasArts? Maybe. But that's not a risk they could afford to take, which is the main problem for a modder in such a case.

posted on November 29th, 2010, 7:34 pm

While I know that there's a whole lot of legal rabble and red tape, I think they should release the source code, or at least give it out to mod teams that request it. I mean the game is nearly 10 years old, the original companies aren't making any appreciable amount of money on it and I think we all know they're never going to revisit the Armada engine, if only because there are far better systems available. Besides it's not the owners of Star Trek who would necessarily lose out as the source code is completely unrelated to the actual game content; the content can be anything as long as the engine can use it. So why not pass the code on to someone who can actually use it and give it new life. Besides only a fraction of the modding community really has the knowledge to make much use of the source code; you need to know actual programming, not just how to edit odfs and models. Just imagine how much better Fleet Ops could be if the devs had the source code.

posted on November 29th, 2010, 8:31 pm

Maybe they should but the company really just has no reason too so i doubt that if will ever happen

posted on November 29th, 2010, 8:37 pm

It can still be done. Only a few years ago there was a Star Wars-themed mod in the works for Command and Conquer: Generals. LucasArts caught wind, and in true Lucas fashion, threw a fit and threatened a suit if the mod wasn't taken down. The modders complied. Could they have possibly ignored Lucasarts, fought the suit and been found in their favor, with all court costs paid by LucasArts? Maybe. But that's not a risk they could afford to take, which is the main problem for a modder in such a case.

Or they coulda just said 'yeah well stop' but lied, then released it w/o crediting themselves.