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To be safe, I would recommend you develop it completely separately, and only integrate it once you've completed it.
Well you can't officially patent software in Europe, so you can ignore that point then.
Ideas aren't protected by copyright law - so there's nothing stopping someone from creating their own version of your game. That's a "good thing" IMO though - if people could protect game ideas, then you probably wouldn't have been allowed to have created your mud in the first place.
They've bought a license to use the Settlers of Catan trademarks (the names, logos, etc) and copyrighted material. Without that licence they could still create the same style of game, but they would have to call it something else, and would have to phrase the rules differently, use different graphics/images, and so on.
You may find this of interest:
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