This really troubles me as the legalities are not in our favour.
Oh, how quickly we forget.
I'm assuming that you're typing that message on a PC running Windows, and/or a Mac with an Intel chip inside it?
Let me tell you a story. A story about two tiny unknown little companies, who in 1982, reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS and built compatible systems. One of those was CDP, the other, Compaq Computer Corporation. The resulting explosion in popularity of the clones, not the original, caused it to overtake the single-manufacturer designs and cemented it as the foundation of what would become the PC revolution.
In 1986, a small chip manufacturer that IBM had been using to second-source the 8086 and 80286 had their contract abruptly terminated by Intel (probably because IBM was no longer the primary consumer of their chips). Instead of giving up, they started from scratch and reverse engineered the 80386, eventually producing a competing version. They did the same for every new feature that Intel added, eventually coming up with improvements of their own that Intel was forced to integrate or fall behind. The resulting processor war caused prices to drop dramatically, while rapidly advancing the technology much faster than it would have with Intel resting on their laurels. If you haven't guessed yet, the company in question was Advanced Micro Devices, better known as simply AMD.
There are many other examples as well. MS-DOS and PC-DOS (and CP/M for that matter). Xerox and Mac/Windows. The list goes on.
Yes, it can be a legal minefield and those companies eventually lawyered up, but it's a sad state of affairs that a few software giants have managed to lobby and brainwash people into thinking that the very thing they built their empires on is outright illegal. Being in constant irrational fear is no way to live.
See also: Samba, OpenOffice, etc.
This needs to be COMPLETELY separate from Titan or Plan Z does, otherwise I will find it very difficult to participate.
Well, hate to break it to you, but that along with other projects is something that Titan Skunkworks has been working on since long before Plan Z was a glimmer in anyone's eye. Splitting Plan Z off into its own legal entity is a good idea anyway for a variety of reasons.
If NCSoft wants to spend money for the sole purpose of harassing some hobbyists who pose no threat to them and only care to preserve some fragment of the work that Cryptic and Paragon poured their hearts into for historical record and posterity, then they're free to do so, and no amount of precautions can prevent that. That's assuming they can even pass muster with only rumor and people chatting on forums about the possibility to go on. It certainly won't help their stock value or public image, but it's their money to waste, especially since there isn't anything infringing for them to find.
However, I'd still prefer they didn't, because that would be annoying. So I for one am not going to mention it again, as that's something that can be done perfectly well behind the scenes.