EVE General Discussion

Since this may actually be a serious question - I'll give you a serious anwser: it depends.

Different countries have different laws regarding intellectual property ownership, but there are also some international laws.

Obvious stuff (simplified):
All registered trademarks are intellectual property.
Everything created by a human is his intellectual property unless the ownership or right to use has been transfered willingly by the person. Even at that moment the creator, according to some countries laws, is still the rightfull owner and has only transfered the right to fully use his intellectual property.

Less obvious:
All patterns that have the creator still living are intellectual property even without registration. It depends what kind, since there are 2 kinds, but it still is intellectual property.

I can't really even start explaining to you how much stuff is covered by intellectual property laws. It's a huge branch of law you need to memorize to fully understand it. But as a rule of thumb - something is intellectual property if it is unique in any way.


EDIT:

Oh I forgot to add... It all works unless you live in China. China has no laws regarding intellectual property protection, the China goverment has also offitially stated (many times) that they will not protect anyones intellectual property. That's why you've got tonns of factories in China producing equipment and labling it "nike" or whatever while the quality is totally not as good as the real thing. There are no consequences for that in China.

Vicker because some of us know that trolls have a hard time digesting good fiberous information.

Which is why I said you might be able to sue Capcom if they used your particular drawing. However, while they wouldn't be able to sue you for just drawing Megaman at home, they could sue you for displaying it publicly, whether or not you made any money off it. As owners of the copyright, they control all rights to all displays of their work. Its easy enough to test. Draw picture of Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse having sex, post it to a public website, and see how long it takes to get a cease and desist order (or for the site host to get a removal notice).

Well, in the case of spacecraft it gets a little nebulous (no pun intended).

You can't copyright the idea of a ship that travels in space (though you can copyright a specific spaceship, so long as it's distinct in some way), so -- unless you use CCP's proprietary vessel names or designs, you're pretty much covered.

'Distinct', in a legal sense, usually means 'posessing a feature that would reasonably not appear on a typical example of its kind'.

Which is where trade mark steps in. I slap logos of the npcs corps onto the ships name the ships inline with the races and style the ship heavily after said races only exceptions are my SOE thukker and modrus ships.

OP, the short answer is as long as it isn't:

1.) being sold
2.) hurting CCP's image/income (slander included)
3.) restricted in some way (buy x to do y)

You're basically fine.

Intellectual property as one of the posts described quite well Dr Karsun can be almost anything that is considered unique.

E.g things like experience systems are far from unique and incredibly diverse amongst mmo's, Orc warriors on the other hand? Not so much (This is partially why blizzard's subpeona's keep failing, Aside from lore they have little basis for IP infringement)

The long and the short of it, if you're just doing it for learning, the experience or even testing a theory you are fine.

If it was otherwise software like evehq and EFT/pyfa could be seen as 'infringing on CCP's intellectual property' which most of us know is certainly not the case.

There are a number of games that have "borrowed' bits and pieces from EVE's lore and gameplay, have very similar UIs, gameplay, etc.

If you're working on your own game in the 4X genre I suggest taking it back old school and doing some research on Elite, Star Control and Masters of Orion as well as looking at some other past and recent titles.

EVE itself has done some very obvious borrowing from Elite and games that were produced later and were modeled after Elite.

Picturess Playable tech demo or it didn't happen.

Correct.

Capcom could not sue you for drawing Megaman, they cannot even sue you for publishing the drawing as long as you are not doing so for financial gain. The drawing is your work and thus your porperty, but the premise and idea behind it are Capcoms and the moment you financialy gain from that they can enforce their intelectual property rights.

The only time your drawing would not be deemed as your work is if it was an exact copy in detail of an existing image, but we're looking into the realms of forgery here.

I'd say pretty much everything in eve is IP

However perpetuum online pretty much is eve without the space. So I really don't know what the red line that can't be crossed.

The stories, models, races etc are off course all off limits.