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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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The actually law DEMANDS you defend your IP or you effectively lose it
Damn, remember when Sega lost the sonic IP to all the fan games?
Yep.
After a tiny bit more research, it looks like for the Portal Demake, Valve did not even actually issue a Cease and Desist, they actually just heavily recommended the project be cancelled /out of fear of the devs being fucked by the far, far more absurdly litigious Nintendo/.
While I think Nintendo's actually legal argument in that, which would basically be that a whole art style from the lower res and lower poly graphics constitutes essentially their brand ... I think this is bullshit and legally dubious, but of course Nintendo has faaaar more money to throw at lawyers than some random indie dev, so theyd likely have their lives ruined one way of another.
Portal64 builds the ROM locally. A legal copy of Portal for PC is required to extract and convert the assets. Websites distributing the finished ROM are liable for copyright violation against Valve but Valve isn't liable for anything regarding that fan project by Nintendo.
You know that's not how lawyers view projects in development
You know that Nintendo's lawyers did not even raise a finger, right?
When did I say Nintendo
The repeated claim is that Valve acted on behalf of Nintendo because it uses APIs copyrighted by Nintendo. At no point did Valve protest the use of their assets.