What occurs to recreation IPs from firms that not exist? For instance, a recreation collection from a studio that closed within the 2000s. Can one other studio take over that IP and relaunch the sport, or is the sport without end within the limbo?

July 4, 2025

2

There’s often any person who owns that IP. When an organization goes bankrupt and shuts down, the corporate goes into the chapter liquidation. The court docket appoints a trustee that is put in control of promoting off the entire firm’s property to repay as a lot of the corporate’s money owed as attainable. This implies bodily issues like workplace furnishings, computer systems, kitchen tools, unsold stock, and so on. and it additionally means digital issues like mental property and expertise rights. At a chapter liquidation public sale, different events typically can (and do) purchase up these IP rights as a result of they will typically be had for a reasonably low value.

You possibly can truly search for who owns a copyright in actual time on the [US Copyright Office Public Records Search page] and discovering the Claimant (present proprietor).

I must also observe that abandonware (i.e. software program that publishers have stopped promoting and supporting) lives in a authorized gray space that’s nonetheless actionable. Partaking with it for private use in all probability will not put you in authorized scorching water, however making an attempt to construct and promote it commercially seemingly will. IP regulation nonetheless applies, even when the IP is at present fallow.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Bought a burning query you need answered?