As long as the game isn't being sold commercially, I don't see what the problem is. You're not competing with Sony for a profit, you're just making a fan game. You're not making money from they're fundamental game concept, so they should have no complaint, even if they do find it.

 &#A0;And I seriously doubt the existence of another fan game will affect future sales of the official games

That's generally what fans argued with regards to fan games, but it's still the point that when the fan game is so close to the original in look and feel, it would act as a free version of the official game and therefore may cause certain consumers that might have bought the official version to get the free version instead.  This would be a business loss for the company.

I certainly am not saying the argument is bulletproof, but this is the general principle behind it.  In effect, you are "selling" the fan game for $0.  I too doubt that the effect will be significant since it seems like right now there isn't significant overlap yet between the PSP Lemmings crowd and the "old-school" Lemmings crowd here, but we can certainly point to LemSteven as an example evidence of a consumer whose decision has been influenced by the availability of these "free" versions of Lemmings.

(In case you're confused: keep in mind that this doesn't you can't have competing products, just that you cannot have a competing product that is produced mostly by copying an existing product, in effect stealing the time and efforts the company spent on the existing product.)

Which is actually why it's possible that you could be better off not contacting Sony/whatever-big-company so they are not alert to this so soon, well before you are even close to finishing the game.  Although I guess contacting Mike could be worth a try.

But really, call me cynical but I think it's more likely to be a fruitless try than anything else (I can hardly imagine anyone "behind the scene" having that much power and motivation to do something for some, well forgive the harshness, "nobody''), but like one of the Genesis levels, I guess one should "try anything once".

Incidentally, if you really are going to go for a plea, I suggest turning it into some form of petition that all of us here can sign somehow, so that the company cann't just dismiss it as the cry of the lone wolf.  (Of course, the cry of 100 lone wolves ain't much either, but still a stronger cry )

There's always a backdoor in things like this...for example if you're not allowed by the law to use the name "lemmings",you can always use the name "lemmmings" or "lemmiings"...

I figure I might as well explain the way I understand trademarks to work.  Again, I'm not an expert on this, so take anything in this post with a grain of salt.

Basically, for trademarks, the concept of infringement is that you have two companies producing two products that has similar in function and form, and the second company is naming its product "too similarly" to the first company, thereby potentially confusing consumers and potentially steal away businesses from the first company.

So what happens when you register a trademark is that you basically register an association between your product and either a specific word or a specific short phrase that identifies (brands) your product.  Then if some other company comes along with a product that is similar, and they decided to brand it with a name that can potentially be confused with your TMed name, you can then sue them for TM infringement and have the court decided whether infringement occurs and what the settlement would be.

Obviously, like a lot of laws, there are very definite gray areas built into it, one of which is what exactly constitute "similarity".  However, I think it's fair to say that the word "Lemiings" is far too close to the word "Lemmings" (a magazine for example could've easily made a typo resulting in the misspelled form), and since both products are also similar in function and form (a computer game whereby the player directs a group of tiny creatures towards a goal thru the use of a limited set of moves), it is practically a certainty that if the case was brought to the courts, the verdict would be that infringement has occurred.

It becomes more grey when you start deviating a little more, like calling it "clems" or something.  But since the English language gives rather vast naming possibilities, and since generally you want your brand to distinguish itself as much as possible from your competitors, most companies will actively seek to come up with and trademark a name that is as distinct as possible from the existing ones in the market.  So rather than risking "clems", they would much prefer to go with something like "Dimwits" or "Fools" or whatever.

My rescue plan at this moment is to only deliver the game engine and extract everything else from an (installed) Win95 version. However, I changed lots of the resources in the mean time. Also this would be a lot of (boring) work and would somehow ruin large parts of my design.

The game engine is probably the safest part to release in terms of IP issues.

Conceivably, as you have suggested yourself, you can leave the distribution of the actual graphics, sounds, etc. separate from the distribution of the game engine, that way you might be able to shift the liability to the person distributing the graphics/sounds/etc.

But perhaps Cheapo is a good example that despite issues with IP laws, it can still thrive in the proper environment.  Keep in mind that it does take time and money to actually pursue a case, so most companies generally start off with a threatening "cease and desist" letter first, which, despite whatever language it might use, has no legal bearings.  Only when you continue defying them afterwards do they actually start filing a case against you.

So it's not necessarily a bad thing to just blazantly do as you wish, and then when the big boys come down on your throat, go underground instead.  Kinda like how Cheapo has evolved.  As you see here, it is still thriving.

In my attempt to recreate the original game as good as possible I'm using original sound effects, music tracks, graphics and level designs (mainly from the Win95 version). So chances are I infringe a copyright.

I'm surprised that it took you that long to come to terms with this.  I would think that you're aware of going down this path the moment you started ripping graphics off the Win95 version.

So I tried to contact people at TakeTwo

Don't bother.  AFAIK in the history of computer games, especially well-known commercial ones, there has never been a case of individuals being granted any sort of licensing terms beyond the boilerplate ones specified by the software's EULA.  Copyrights (and other IPs) are generally transferred or bought/sold/traded between corporations or similar business entities, often as part of an overall transfer of IP within a business acquisition or the like.

It also doesn't help that Sony is indeed currently planning to release a remake of Lemmings for the PSP in the near future.

In black despair I also tried to contact Mike Dailly and the author of DHTML lemmings. Unfortunately, nobody even answered my email.

Even if they did, I doubt they'd be of help.  Copyright laws have a "for-hire" clause whereby any creative work created by a paid employee hired by a company, means that the company, not the employee, owns the copyright.  And most companies, especially in the business of software, generally makes their employee sign an even more stringent agreement as part of their condition for employment anyway.

Though I suppose in the case of Mike, if he has graphics which were never used in the game and sufficiently different from the actual ones in the game, conceivably he could own the copyrights to such graphics.  But we haven't seen him around for a while.

Another challenge from ONML:

Wicked 3: &#A0;save 100% using only 3 builders and 2 diggers, nothing else. &#A0;So no climbers and not even bashers.

This is obviously not glitch-free, although the glitch used is quite well-known well before I ever posted here.

For the same reason that the 77/80, no-build-west Mayhem 29 challenge is affected, on the Mac you need 4 builders rather than 3 for this Wicked 3 challenge.  Still don't need climbers and bashers though, and the solution remains almost identical.

The 100% Taxing 6 solution is not possible on the Mac.<snip>  So basically any solution for the level involving bashing through the steel-terrain boundary will not work on the Mac.

That being said, much of the 100% Taxing 6 solution can be adapted to work on the Mac, resulting in a 98% solution instead of 100% (ie. you lose 1).  Basically you substitute the non-working steel-destruction glitch with a different steel-destruction glitch that still works on the Mac.

Well, I guess I wasn't counting Crazy 11 since you still end up using the same number of skills.

But I'm wrong anyway, I forgotten that you can also apply the glitch in Fun 8 for a 100% solution that uses only 3 skills and no blockers, so I guess that's also a difference too.

Still, Wild 9 is probably the level where the glitch's effect is so dramatic, since it renders the level almost trivial.