Ignoring the possible issue of "making a similar game" being somehow an infringement independent of actual copying of game data, the far more blatant and relevant issue is that the game data still directly uses material copyrighted and trademarked by Konami. The maintainer mentioned in the changelog that they "Removed non-free original graphics", which is true: they removed the graphics set "alternate" which was simply the original graphics with various improvements, leaving the "naramura" graphics set which appears to be *mostly* an original creation. However, this graphics set still includes several chunks of non-original or trademarked data, including:
* The title screen in "start.pcx" which includes the trademark "Konami" and a derived game logo. Compare the layout and font of the words; they look like a near-exact match, with just a color change and an increased size. Creating an original logo design, and avoiding the trademarked company name would solve this issue. For reference, BTW, a quick search on the USPTO website indicates that there are no trademarks on the game name itself, only on "Konami"; on the other hand, choosing an original game name would avoid some extra trouble, and make it easier to claim the logo image is original. * The Konami logo in konami.pcx; trademarked and copyrighted by Konami. This should be removed entirely, as should any and all references to the word "konami" in the entire work. * It is possible, given these issues, that some of the other graphics were not drawn from scratch, and may be modified versions of the original graphics. Most look original to me, but to be certain, it would be a good idea to contact the original author of the graphics set. Any non-original graphics need to be replaced by original graphics. - Josh Triplett
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