Lead Pursuit must have had something in their EULA that stated something to the effect that any modifications to files distributed with F4.0 or files created for use with F4.0 that are openly distributed become the property of LP.

I can tell you guys, in all honesty, that this is NOT the case with SCS, so I wouldn't worry about Jamie ganking any of our work and telling us "tough". :lol:

Cheers,
David

I wouldn't worry about it either. Jamie's not LP. :p
And it would have been MicroProse's EULA.

MicroProse is still around? Wow. :sunny:

Cheers,
David

Edit: Nope I just googled it, Atari closed them down in 2003... sad.

IANAL, but...

A mod is, by its very nature, an extension to a product. Therefore, the mod is useless without the product. If the product were to be withheld for whatever reason (e.g. embargo) then the mod is essentially worthless.

The mod does, however, represent a separate piece of work, and can even be sold separately. There is a minefield of exceptions, though. If there is an agreement in place between product maker and modder, that agreement may 'transfer/steal/whatever' the rights - if the laws that govern it allows such a thing.
(The best word to use depends on the viewpoint of the speaker.)

Think about e.g. car mods - sold more or less separately, (some not legal to use, but that's another story) and not at all controlled by the car makers. Some of the practices nearly assumed in the thread above, would extend this analogy as follows: "The car companies have the right to raid the car-mod makers and confiscate all their wares, manufacturing equipment, blueprints, and so on, and then make&sell the stuff themselves." However, they are in their rights to duplicate the modders works to achieve the same effect (barring patents) and (optionally) include it in the new version of the original product, but that assumes they do put a bit of work of their own into it.

Or they can ask nicely :D
(While LW would be upset if they did it without asking, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd jump at the opportunity to provide "the new stock db". In his position, I would.)

This is my understanding of it, anyway; as I said, IANAL. (I Am Not A Lawyer)

Personally, I wouldn't be too concerned about the Navy using our scenarios for training for the same reason the LWAMI documentation recommends using scenarios specifically created for LWAMI: the modeling of the performance of sonar and other gear in DW isn't exactly 100% accurate, and probably on purpose. If they were going to use a mission we'd made, it would take half as long as it took to make the mission to make it conform to real world parameters.