It’s either
a) Your taking what other people have already formulated, and building on it in a way that it has a broader appeal.
or
b) You just don’t think your game is at the centre of the universe.

“Why Copernicus?”
“No reason, it’s a randomly selected codeword.”

“Well there has to be some reason…”
“NO REASON”

“COME ON! There’s always a reason!”
“Ok, you can’t tell anybody, but… when we were vetting backstory content, several backstory elements kept crossing paths with Copernicus. It was kinda like a “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” thing, so it became our internal codename. No big deal”

“What parts?”
“Can’t really say.”

“His work? His life? His location? His theories? What?”
“I can’t tell you…. maybe none of those, maybe all… maybe its about things that have since been named after him too. I can’t say.”

“Oooo… a google search has schools, museums, even a moon crater and a satellite… is this a sci-fi space MMO?”
“… you can find him on currency too… not that this is necessarily related. Like I said, the name appears everywhere. You really can’t read too much into it… It was just a pattern we noticed…”

“Currency? So a futuristic space MMO with a heavy trade element? Awesome.”
“I didn’t say anything like that. That’s all speculation… and on a totally unrelated sidenote, “space” doesn’t have to be futuristic… look at spelljammer.”

“Oh man, this is awesome. It’s a spelljammer MMO?”
“No, it’s not a spelljammer MMO. All we’re saying is it’s codenamed “Copernicus” and it will be based on original intellectual property created…”

“But it’s similar to spelljammer.”
“All I said was the codename. You’ve made up all the rest yourself right here. We have R.A Salvatore and Todd McFarlane as our creative team…”

“So it’s going to be Drizzt in a spelljammer setting with a Spawn?”
“All original stuff here, clean slate. Let me make that clear”

“Clean slate… MMO… Tabula Rasa! You’re taking Tabula Rasa gameplay and putting it in a spelljammer setting! Will the dark elves be good guys or bad?!?”
“I think I’ve said enough.”

“Don’t worry, man, I’ll keep you as an “unnamed but reliable source.” I gotta go start my blog and register a fansite domain name. This is soo coool…..”