Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mustang19 on December 06, 2007, 04:47:13 pm

Title: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Mustang19 on December 06, 2007, 04:47:13 pm
FSWiki (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FreeSpace_3) states that Interplay currently owns the FS IP. It has these links to the US Patent and Trademark Office:

http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&sno=75390434
http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&rno=2314929
http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&sno=75727695
http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&rno=2432924

The same FSWiki article states that an (fairly unreliable) source in Interplay states that Interplay does not own the FS IP.

Now look at the links provided above. Looks like a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo, but as far as I can tell these are assigments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_%28law%29), or legal transfers of the IP rights to various companies. Apparently, the FreeSpace IP is owned by various credit companies and Microsoft.

Look at the patent office links and tell me what you think.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 06, 2007, 06:39:40 pm
I doubt any one of us really knows where the licence is today.

Last we ever heard of it, Interplay retained the rights to publishing (as said by Kulas, if sequels are to be made, it's Interplay's choice), and Volition to the content of the two already released games (at least that's an assumption considering who's been handling the assets after the breakup).

Who Interplay whored it to, and for what purposes, I doubt we'll ever really know that. Though I do assume we'd hear about it changing hands at some point if it happened, for black and white profit.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: TrashMan on December 06, 2007, 06:50:51 pm
It's in limbo...and hopefully, it will return.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 06, 2007, 06:56:17 pm
God I hope not.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Polpolion on December 06, 2007, 07:10:00 pm
Of all of the gaming communities that I've heard of, this one is the only one that's opposed to a sequel.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 06, 2007, 07:52:53 pm
For very good and obvious reasons though.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: spartan_0214 on December 06, 2007, 08:54:13 pm
Not at all relating to Not Derek Smart.

Seriously, though, Volition would have to release an uber sequel what with the mods we here at HLP are like. And how many sequels that have come out recently have been uber? PoTC, meh. Spider Man 3, meh. The Bourne Ultimatum, good action, meh for predictability. What else?

If :v: were to release you-know-what, they'd have to make it uber or it won't do well. Plus, we have enough content here at HLP to last a good long while, lots of campaigns are to be released (granted, some by 2009).
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Agent_Koopa on December 06, 2007, 09:10:18 pm
PoTC, meh.

You should never have to sit around for an hour after the movie explaining it to the rest of your family.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: spartan_0214 on December 06, 2007, 09:12:04 pm
PoTC, meh.

You should never have to sit around for an hour after the movie explaining it to the rest of your family.

Kinda like Halo 3, eh? that was the other flop I was searching for...
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Mustang19 on December 07, 2007, 08:31:36 am
I doubt any one of us really knows where the licence is today.

Last we ever heard of it, Interplay retained the rights to publishing (as said by Kulas, if sequels are to be made, it's Interplay's choice), and Volition to the content of the two already released games (at least that's an assumption considering who's been handling the assets after the breakup).

Who Interplay whored it to, and for what purposes, I doubt we'll ever really know that. Though I do assume we'd hear about it changing hands at some point if it happened, for black and white profit.

Considering that they sold it to several credit companies, it was probably to get them out of debt. Still, if a FreeSpace sequel ever does come out, it may well be by Microsoft.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Snail on December 07, 2007, 08:37:55 am
Considering that they sold it to several credit companies, it was probably to get them out of debt. Still, if a FreeSpace sequel ever does come out, it may well be by Microsoft.

What?
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Mustang19 on December 07, 2007, 08:41:07 am
Read the first post.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Snail on December 07, 2007, 08:41:51 am
No, no, no, I mean what?
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 07, 2007, 08:57:29 am
FREEEEEEEEEEEELANCEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Pass.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: IPAndrews on December 07, 2007, 09:21:30 am
In answer to the thread title... no I don't own the Freespace.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2007, 09:25:13 am
FREEEEEEEEEEEELANCEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Pass.

Freelancer was good, but there wasn't enough "OOOMPH" in it to trump FS.
Who knows...who knows...a miracle might happen and we might even live to see FS# that's amazingly great (regardless which company makes it)
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Mustang19 on December 07, 2007, 09:45:30 am
I got all this sorted out. Apparently FreeSpace was briefly traded to MS and credit companies in 2001 as loan collateral, then return in 2002. So forget the Microsoft thing. Sorry, false alarm.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 07, 2007, 10:13:36 am
FREEEEEEEEEEEELANCEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Pass.

Freelancer was good, but there wasn't enough "OOOMPH" in it to trump FS.
Who knows...who knows...a miracle might happen and we might even live to see FS# that's amazingly great (regardless which company makes it)

You're a modeler, that means you need to have some sort of grasp on mathematics.

Calculate the odds of anyone creating an FS game that sequelizes the first two in a satisfactory matter, gameplay and story wise.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Mad Bomber on December 07, 2007, 03:42:36 pm
FREEEEEEEEEEEELANCEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Pass.

Freelancer was good, but there wasn't enough "OOOMPH" in it to trump FS.

At the risk of going off topic...

Freelancer started off as a pretty good and mysterious thriller of a plot. People disappearing, paranoia, conspiracies abound, good stuff like that.
Spoiler:
But then the fat man's eyes started glowing and Rheinland inexplicably got 200 battleships out of nowhere, and Trent has to use the Magic Reset Button Artifact to save the day. BLEH.

Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2007, 06:11:39 pm
Quote
At the risk of going off topic...

Freelancer started off as a pretty good and mysterious thriller of a plot. People disappearing, paranoia, conspiracies abound, good stuff like that.
Spoiler:
But then the fat man's eyes started glowing and Rheinland inexplicably got 200 battleships out of nowhere, and Trent has to use the Magic Reset Button Artifact to save the day. BLEH.

Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

Yeah. the initial story was great. I got swept into it. Escaping from liberty space, commander Walker and the stuff - great. But the aliens were done in the WORST possible way.



Quote
Calculate the odds of anyone creating an FS game that sequelizes the first two in a satisfactory matter, gameplay and story wise.[/quoteg

((FS1+FS2)*C/L)* ([V] - $) - M$^2/SMART) + HEF - SOD+2 -SCP
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: karajorma on December 08, 2007, 04:32:56 am
You evidently were playing freelancer all wrong. The only purpose of that game was to deliberately choose never to actually be ready for missions so that you could piss off your companions.

That and stare at Juni's arse.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: TrashMan on December 08, 2007, 05:44:00 am
That and stare at Juni's arse.

 ;7
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: ns161 on December 10, 2007, 07:24:57 pm
Ok, I have some legal training and I state this with the caveat that I have NOT yet taken patent law.

But it looks to me like Interplay at some point "assigned" the IP to Microsoft (probably to avoid having it auctioned off in some kind of bankruptcy proceeding) and then Microsoft assigned it back to Interplay in 2002.

Now what that means in terms of ownership?  I don't really know.

I can be reasonably sure of one thing though, "Assign" is almost certainly not the same as "Own".  I don't know quite what it means, but they are probably two different concepts.  Legal writing is very specific and if they meant to say "Own" they would've said "Own"
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: spartan_0214 on December 10, 2007, 10:29:02 pm
In layman's terms, it means that Interplay can no longer work on any further FreeSpace games. And since Volition is all but bankrupt (I know, I know, just released a new game, but Tarr Chronicles was meh) the FreeSpace community will have to stick to open-source modification for now (which isn't terrible, all things considered).
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: achtung on December 10, 2007, 10:42:04 pm
In layman's terms, it means that Interplay can no longer work on any further FreeSpace games. And since Volition is all but bankrupt (I know, I know, just released a new game, but Tarr Chronicles was meh) the FreeSpace community will have to stick to open-source modification for now (which isn't terrible, all things considered).

:wtf:
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: BlackDove on December 11, 2007, 08:10:56 am
In layman's terms, it means that Interplay can no longer work on any further FreeSpace games. And since Volition is all but bankrupt (I know, I know, just released a new game, but Tarr Chronicles was meh) the FreeSpace community will have to stick to open-source modification for now (which isn't terrible, all things considered).

You manage to be wrong several times in those two sentences. Truly a feat. Keep writing, maybe you'll break the record.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Bob-san on December 11, 2007, 10:06:14 am
In layman's terms, it means that Interplay can no longer work on any further FreeSpace games. And since Volition is all but bankrupt (I know, I know, just released a new game, but Tarr Chronicles was meh) the FreeSpace community will have to stick to open-source modification for now (which isn't terrible, all things considered).

You manage to be wrong several times in those two sentences. Truly a feat. Keep writing, maybe you'll break the record.
From what I understand--Interplay saved the Freespace license by letting Microsoft "borrow" it--then when they had a budget in place to survive, they had it returned. Somebody in Interplay knows somebody in Microsoft--and let the dealing work. It seems that the Freespace IP is back in Interplay's quite clamy hands. In effect, nothing has changed. Maybe they were planning to do some Freespace 3 for XBox.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on December 13, 2007, 07:25:11 am
Microsofts nature gives the impression that if they were ever "given" ownership (temporary or otherwise) they would just "not" give it back....


Kinda like the president of Cuba in that Trillion Dollar Bill episode of the simpsons.
Title: Re: Who owns the FreeSpace IP?
Post by: Getter Robo G on December 13, 2007, 05:12:54 pm
you know when I posted back in like 2003, we ran more copies (less than 1500) off the presses. I did look at the paperwork briefly and it said INTERPLAY at the top not Microsoft.

Unless the order sent to us was illegal (then I doubt we would be liable since it was in good faith and all the t's crossed and I's dotted correctly) we just pull the masters off the shelf and run the order. Was probably back when schoolpop.com sold it online... AFAIK we hadn't had a FS2 order since and I doubt we still have the masters anymore after the last archive purge.