Elite is currently a legal minefield. David Braben holds half the copyright to the original, but Ian Bell claims to have sold his half of the rights to an unnamed party. The long running fued betwen Braben and Bell is well documented so I won't go into that. What it does mean however is that Braben is happy to allow remakes, and even wanted to open source the original code, but until the mysterious other copyright holder gives their permission even Braben isn't allowed to. This is the reason the name Elite was dropped from Frontier: First Encounters, and the reason "Elite 4" most certainly won't carry the name either.