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sort of legal roms question
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londonbabe:
I was browsing through some random thread and read that a lot of the companies that made arcade games are no longer extant.

Now I'm sure this is an old old question, but I'm idly wondering so I might as well ask!

I know a couple of roms have been declared legal by whatever means that happens, and was wondering whether there's some kind of list of roms that are "orphaned" by the demise of their parent company and if so have any avenues been pursued towards finding out if these roms might be made legal somehow.

I've seen that happen quite a lot with the 8-bit computer emulation scene, where a great deal has been declared as "abandonware" by the authors, but I don't know how that works if the only traceable 'author' is not around any more.
GoPodular.com:
Rather than closing their doors and "abandoning" their stuff, arcade manufactureres often sold their stuff off.  Then that company sold it, then that company sold it, etc, etc.

Some of the ROM's probably could be considered abandonware, but with all the sales contracts dividing up companies 1000 times, it's pretty complex to figure out if anyone does in fact "own" the ROM or not.

The ones where ownership are clear are coming back on Xbox/Wii/PS and PC.
RayB:
Yeah, there's no such thing as truly "abandoning" rights to IP. A company goes out of business, their assets get sold off. Whether the buyer of the IP does anything with the IP is their right, but it doesn't grant any of us the right to use it.

A great example is the coin-op company "Universal" which disappeared in the early 80's. Well, many of their games are now owned by Ultracade.

The only games that have been truly authorized for free use and distribution is Robby Roto, and games for the Vectrex. (Might be a couple others, but I'm not aware of them).

GoPodular.com:

--- Quote from: RayB on October 16, 2006, 05:12:09 pm ---A great example is the coin-op company "Universal" which disappeared in the early 80's. Well, many of their games are now owned by Ultracade.

--- End quote ---
Not anymore.  Which makes it an even better example.   ;)

Ultracade has changed hands/done the bankrupt thing a few times.  Now I think it is only a brand name.  IIRC under the buyout terms, Virtual Technologies Inc. (dba Global VR) took the IP they wanted and sold the rest off to repay creditors.  I don't recall if Ultracade or Foley owned the TM on Mr. DO!, but if you go to the USPTO.gov website, the Mr. DO! trademark stuff has recently changed hands.

So who owns the ROM?  Whoever owns the trademark for the title?  What about the copyright on the artwork?  What about the copyright for the game code?  Was that ever sold?  Did it die with Universal?  Who knows.  If there's enough money to be made, eventually someone will drag it to court.

IMHO, owning the trademark to use the name has zero to do with being able to sell the old ROM's.  If Sony let the trademark on "Playstation" lapse, could I re-file the trademark and start producing Playstation's for retail sales?  No.
Chris:
It also depends on the contract with the programmer, as some older contracts specified that the rights revert to the programmer after sales drop below a certain level (this is more similar to a book publishing contract than a modern IP work-for-hire contract).  This is how Robby Roto got released.

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