[AlphaOne]

Er....you could do that Sing but i'm not saing you should do that...neither 'm I sayng you should go in and grab every other intelectual properti of games you might come upon and then the HLP could sell them back to theyr owners at 10 times the price to get even with them for what they have done to all of FS fans out there or just for the hell of it.
Or you could just go get the FS licences or whatever give them to someone and then wait for the next day till they come to work and drill a whole woth theyr squeky little heads into a reinforced concrete wall..just for...the hell of it.
Oh and if the company that owns Interplay goes under like I read i think Viveddi was...and if that company owns blizzard and sierra what would happen with half-life starcraft and other games like that.....I realy was waiting for a sequal to starcraft broodwar

[Ghostavo]

No, Vivendi doesn't own Interplay, Titus does... right?

[karajorma]

But apparently Vivendi owns Titus

[Singh]

I just had a thought......who has rights on the story?
If [v] has right on the source, interplay on whatever's in the .vp, what about the actual story and universe itself?
If interplay doesnt own it...we need to get the people who created it, and ask THEM to get it (if it's possible), so at least we have somewhere to start

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Singh
I just had a thought......who has rights on the story?
If [v] has right on the source, interplay on whatever's in the .vp, what about the actual story and universe itself?
If interplay doesnt own it...we need to get the people who created it, and ask THEM to get it (if it's possible), so at least we have somewhere to start

Originally posted by Kazan
I just emailed Adam Pletcher, nobody else bother him, I don't want him flooded with emails

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Kazan
to make things simple

Volition owns everything in the origional sourceball distributed to use that spawned the SCP (and a few things they didn't include in it)

Interplay owns everthing in the VPs

I was under the impression V owned everything Freespace, including what was under the VPs, but interplay had exclusive distribution rights, as well as the rights to the MVE format?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


I was under the impression V owned everything Freespace, including what was under the VPs, but interplay had exclusive distribution rights, as well as the rights to the MVE format?

I think the VP content is regarded as the intellectual property (not sure if this is the right term) - i.e. everything that makes freespace what it is.  I.e. the key characters, images, content that defines the series.

I believe a (possibly irrelevant) comparison is to a movie - the director, cast & crew may change (i.e. Volition), but the studio always owns the key assets which identify that series - story, visual designs, etc (i.e. Interplay).

 Even though it was V's idea and work.

[IceFire]

I was under the understanding that the studio owns the intellectual property of the title (except for externally licensed/produced items) and that the publisher generally only owns the publishing rights.

I doubt Interplay going under will jeapordize the source code.  I guess we'll have to see on that but I would doubt it. Its already a done deal...

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by kasperl
Legal question: Is it just the name Freespace (a trademark, I would say) or the story as well (IP, I geuss) that's under dispute?
I'm trying to read up on US copyright law, but it seems limited to writing, architecture, and visual arts (paintings, video art?). Games aren't mentioned, and the site ( www.copyright.gov ) is about as clear as a muddy pool with algea.

You cannot copyright Titles, only ideas. Therefore i can create something called Freespace as well, as long as its not based on the idea im alright.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Lonestar
You cannot copyright Titles, only ideas. Therefore i can create something called Freespace as well, as long as its not based on the idea im alright.

As long as FreeSpace isn't a trade mark. And even then Interplay would have had to previously have taken down anyone else with a product called Freespace or the trade mark would have become invalid.

[Moonsword]

And they haven't.  There are some other products on the market (though not software) called 'Freespace'.  I think one of them is an audio system of some sort.

[kasperl]

And a domain name regger, IIRC.

But a space game called FS is a whole different cup 'o thea, AFAIK.

[Kazan]

Trademarks only apply to things in the same FIELD

there is a reason why it's "Descent: FreeSpace" for the first one  - because they're used to be a disk maintainance software known as freespace, it's patent ran out after FS1 but before FS2 hence they could call FreeSpace 2 what they did

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by karajorma
But apparently Vivendi owns Titus

I'm not sure of the exact configuration, but I think Titus is its own company, but it has distribution agreements and what-not with Vivendi, so Vivendi gets first pickings when Titus goes under.

[aldo_14]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_6099957.html

[Taristin]

Meh. All those poor people working without getting paid...

[Setekh]

Sheesh. Who knew the death of a dead computer game publisher could be such a long and complicated process.

[kasperl]

The death of any company is a long and complicated process....

[Gloriano]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_6100019.html

[Havock]

for all i care, Lucasarts buys the stuff, then they have something to make movies of after the SW stuff