Hello Games has found itself at the center of another potential legal issue as a Dutch company claims that the No Man’s Sky world generation “superformula” is patented, and the developer needs to return its calls.
Without getting too technical, a company called Genicap believes that the formula being used for the game’s procedurally-generated world was published in 2003 by its founder, plant geneticist Johan Gielis. Dutch paper Telegraaf reports that if Hello Games is indeed using that formula, it needs to licensed, failing which can threaten No Man’s Sky‘s launch. The company doesn’t necessarily want to stop them from using it but it wants a response from Hello Games and appropriate negotiations.  Eurogamer has done some research on this and has found a May 2015 article from The New Yorker in which Director Sean Murray mentioned using the formula (you can read it here). Further research finds that the superformula is in fact patented at the European Patent Office’s database (here). When Eurogamer got in touch with Genicap, here’s what it had to say:

Genicap is working on a project to create revolutionary software based on the superformula that can be used likewise by indies and the major game studios.
Using the superformula to generate natural objects enables you to create endless varied and original objects such as trees, rocks, beaches, planets and mountains. Currently most of this work is still done manually....