Emily,
Well, I know that Sierra did copyright many of the characters. We spent weeks at one point fulfilling the Legal Department's request that we write up "character sheets" that gave all sorts of background information on each character, along with artwork, so that they could be copyrighted. I believe this was done for most of the different series and became a matter of course for any game in development.
I don't think a fangame would even have to use the name "Space Quest" to warrant action on VU's part. Since VU doesn't really hold the license to the name on an overall basis (just on specific games), I doubt they'd have standing to sue over its use. But Roger Wilco is an identifiable character, and they could sue over that (even if it wasn't used in the title). Sue, heck -- for all I know, they might even be able to bring criminal charges if they could convince a prosecuter to do so.
SyntheticGerbil,
Sierra didn't sell the rights to the name Space Quest to the Museum. What I'm not sure of is whether the Museum had copyrighted the name PRIOR to the release of the first Space Quest game. It may've been that Sierra released the first game or two, didn't bother to copyright the name, and then found at some point that it HAD been copyrighted and had to license its own name for later installments. Sierra basically didn't bother to do copyright searches, or copyright its own individual titles and characters, until relatively late in the company's history. Hence, for instance, the Hero's Quest debacle (having to change the name to Quest for Glory after the game was already released), the Keeping Up With The Joneses debacle (having to throw out the entire first run of the game -- boxes, manuals, etc. -- when it was discovered shortly before they were about to ship that Sierra couldn't use the name, and the game was renamed "Jones in the Fast Lane"), and so on.
Some legal aspects were approached way too casually for way too long, which turned out to be very expensive for the company upon occasion. Copyrights and names were a prime example.
Then there was the wonderful story about the battery-operated bunny in SQ4. Our legal department (we actually had one by then) wrote a letter to Duracell to secure their permission to use the bunny. We never heard back from them, so the legal department, feeling it had done due diligence, assumed it was okay to use it. So the game was released. Shortly thereafter, we got a letter from the Energizer people (Energizer batteries are made by Everready, not Duracell), saying, "Excuse us...?" Sierra ended up having to hastily negotiate the rights to the bunny after the fact. Fortunately, I think we were able to demonstrate that this was good publicity for them, and the settlement was very low.
--Josh
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