"EverQuest" is not intellectual property. Intellectual property is a
copyright, a
patent, a
trademark, etc.
Daybreak owns the
trademark to the term "EverQuest", just as The Coca-Cola Company owns the trademark to "Coke". But that doesn't mean that Rogean can't use the word "EverQuest" here ... if it did it would mean Coke could take down any anti-coke website for using their trademark! To violate it Rogean would have to (say) print and sell EverQuest t-shirts.
Daybreak also owns a
copyright both on the server code from 1999-2001, and on the Titanium client. As I explained previously, the server code is lost to time: it doesn't matter who owns the copyright on it. The server code used here is 100% hand-written; it may copy "facts" about the '99-01' server, but every line of code is written and owned by R&N.
The only relevant intellectual property involved is Daybreak's ownership of the copyright on the Titanium client. As I noted it would be .... challenging for Daybreak taking anyone to court over it, but hypothetically they could go after us
players over it.
They likely never will, for the same reason record companies don't sue MP3 downloaders anymore (even though they clearly violate more relevant/recent IP) ... but even if they did it'd be
our necks on the line, not R&N's.
Again, not a lawyer ... but all it takes is a couple hours of reading wikipedia to understand the basics of intellectual property law. Based on that, my non-lawyer self doesn't see what IP R&N are violating.
This is a relevant point; it doesn't matter who will win in the end if you can't afford to fight the suit, and there's truth to Bellamy's point that:
But at the same time, obviously rich people can't just sue random people into oblivion
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] You need a case, ie. you need to show damages, ie. someone has to violate your IP ... and I still don't see anyone violating anything, except us players violating 20-year old Titanium copyrights.