Horde3D

hi there,

do you think it is legal to call an open source game, which is a clone of the Rockstar/DMA game gta2
"gta ng" or "opengta"?

or does that bring any legal issues? do i have to come up with a name completly thought of by myself?

thanks & kind regards,
hs0

As long as gta is not a registered trademark, I don't think there are any legal issues. And if it is, opengta as one word nevertheless should be no problem. But don't take me for granted, I'm not an advocate.

Have a look at promotional material for the GTA games. Do they put a (tm) or (r) symbol next to the "GTA" title?

If yes, then they are claiming ownership of "GTA" as a trade-mark, and if they choose to they could force your to change your name.

There isn't really any harm (as far as I know!) in calling your project "OpenGTA" -- at worst you'll get a letter from Rockstar's lawyers asking you to rename your project. It's only if you refused to cooperate with a request like this that you'd be in trouble.

Similar problems often happen in open source software, like for example wxWindows which became wxWidgets because of Microsoft, or GAIM which had to become Pidgin because of AOL...
Mesa3D also is named like this because of problems with mentionning "OpenGL"...

But anyway, if there is a problem, I think a simple renaming would be OK, as this happened with other projects.

okay thanks a lot for your replies!

i certainly feel safer now about naming it the way I want it, though I've heard about the renaming issues with other open source software, but renameing wouldn't be a problem, so thanks a lot again!

Greetings,
hs0