The only trouble i foresee is that its called aethersworn and magic has the aetherborn. If your story had aether farming and machines you might need to change something, but I highly doubt it since you're not making a tcg.

It's just easier to say than "akasha-sworn"

Scifi/fantasy India is NOT Wizard's IP, and they're non-crazy enough to know it. Kaladesh is their IP, to get hit on infringement you'd have to be borrowing a LOT more. And in the end it's a unique, tangible expression of an idea, not an idea itself, that's copyrighted and protected. Abstract concepts can't be owned. So if your SFF India setting doesn't have whorling aether channels, filigree, and/or the consulate/renegade divide, you're probably safe. I mean, look at follow-the-leader junk like The Asylum's Mockbusters and tell me you can't get pretty freeking close to an existing product while still pulling the "I'm not touching you" card.

Some companies have been known to be bullies regarding their copyrights and IP. Games Workshop became rather notorious when they decided to start clobbering at random for using the phrase "Space Marine" (Which they fairly unenforcably trademarked), doing such things as forcing the takedown of a self-published author's e-book that had nothing to do with them except its title was "Spots the Space Marine". Eventually, everything worked out for the author because GW was simply bullying a nobody and their arguments would never have held up in court, but it was a fairly trying time for those on the receiving end. Wizards, however, doesn't have a history of this kind of trolling.

You can't be brought up on trademark law if you don't actually use a trademark.
You can't be brought up on copyright law if you don't actually make a *copy*

Creating your own thing that is similar to this other thing is protected. The worst of the lot might try to bully you but ultimately it's intimidation and bluster. Very few will bother if you're not worth their time and they don't think they could win an actual case. See Also: Games Workshop (again) versus Chapterhouse Studios where they had a much better case against a real target but STILL largely lost.

There is one consideration further, though: Public opinion. Let me tell a story.

Once upon a time I wrote a book (okay, I've written a few, though I have been dithering in revisions rather than publishing), and it was about a future where magic had become real, that used a lot of traditional Alchemy in its system and plot. I thught I'd done a pretty good job, but then I watched Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. There were some... major similarities. Like, the effect of the Villain's endgame and something of the nature of the Philosopher's Stone. It's a case of convergent evolution (Though I can't prove that), but in the end I decided I had to sit on it. Like, I'll probably be sitting on this thing until 2030 and/or I've published several more original works. Not because I'm afraid of any legal action; It's totally unactionable the same way the Tolkien Estate couldn't sue the pants off of Terry Brooks for The Sword of Shannara, but because if this is my foot forward then I will be seen as a copycat and a hack unless I have some other reputation first and/or there's enough intervening years that what is actually nonexistent influence but looks like major influence to the point of stealing way too many major ideas would be seen instead as cultural bleed-through or a reprise of themes long laid to rest. I may never decide that it's the right time for that work to see the light of day, and it's not anything legal I'm concerned over.

FMA is practically no longer in public consciousness outside of a few otaku groups, though

A lot of very popular young adult fantasy trash is just the same thing slightly rehashed or relfavored so i wouldnt worry too much about being similar to other things if Its well written and not young adult fantasy trash. Heh

That's the first time I heard about FMA. Didn't read it yet. Slightly amused by "I never thought I could be jealous of a wrench" even though I doubt it was from the manga.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHs6nnIO9x0&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Well, I've just finished a book series I've been reading for something akin to a decade (or better) and that's left me feeling somewhat hollow

Same.

Do tell?

I've been rereading The Dark Tower. I'm on Wolves of the Calla (here in the states we finally got the Steve Stone cover art depicting the wolves themselves), and wondering why, oh why, couldn't Sony give New York a kind of todash vibe if they're setting so much of their movie there. Like that feeling of everpresent darkness, and The Mist-esque beasts lurking just beyond..

I;m going to go ahead and assume it was the Wheel Of Time. Should've expected a wheel to roll downhill.

No, it was the Noble Dead Saga by Barb and J.C. Hendee.
The final book was actually printed last year, but I was waiting for the paperback release. However, it was inexplicably cancelled, so I fetched a reasonably priced hardback instead.

Doomfist = awesome villain

How am I supposed to get any work done when the universe is throwing Doomfist, Spiderman, Knights of the Frozen Throne, new adventure time, Splatoon 2, kingsman 2 (I think?) And probably more, at me. All in July!?

I'm feeling a touch nettled. I've misplaced several cards I need for a deck and there's no telling where they might actually be. They aren't especially valuable, and can easily be replaced, but after havng set them aside for so long with the express purpose of using them in the deck, I've no clue how they were separated from the cards that ARE accounted for.

@lily: well, kingsman, at least, isn't coming out for a bit. And doomfist won't be client live until late July at least.

PTR is good enough for me. I swear there was something else too but I can't remember.

Edit: War for the planet of the apes, that was it.

Nettling Imp tapped.

Goku has killed people for less than what these two kids are doing.