Quote:
Originally Posted by kato13
Given you have the US government form the teams you have already significantly broken from the Morrow Project template. I think if you lose the word cryogenic (perhaps long term hibernation) you get even further away. If you avoid a time traveling prophet of doom, a group of powerful US industrialists, a universal antidote, vehicles run by fusion plants, Powered Armor, etc I don't think they could touch you.
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In general, technologies are not copyright-able (in the sense that a person can prohibit others from making reference to them or using them conceptually), so cyrogenics/cryonics is perfectly useable as a concept here, as are fusiion power vehicles, etc..
In actuality, copyright generally is easy to get around. It's the particular embodiment and presentation of the concepts that is copyrightable, not the basic concepts themselves.Now
trademarks are another story.
It would be entirely possible to write, for example, a story that had a human captain of a starship representing a peaceful association of worlds set in the 23rd century with an alien XO, etc.
So long as you're not doing a story about Starfleet Capt Kirk of the USS Enterprise representing the United Federation of Planets set in the 23rd century and his Vulcan Science Officer Spock, you can ape the forms fairly closely.
Protecting the idea itself (industrialist sets up cryo frozen teams to rebuild the world after disaster) would require a
patent. I don't know if that has been done.
I'd recommend contacting a lawyer who is skilled in copyright and patent issues really. Even though you may be perfectly in the clear writing a conceptual near-clone of the Project legally, the MP holders could and likely would try to sue anyways. It's happened before.