Split: Blood TM cancled

Discuss and hash out the Blood universe here.

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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

First, welcome to the forums.

Q: WBIE release the rights to Blood into the public domain?
A: Not as far as I can tell.

Q: Did they just expired the trademark of the name Blood?
A: They just expired the trademark of the name Blood.

"Anything that is under a "cancelled" copyright by their owners has to go somewhere, rights speaking."
Yes, but they didn't cancel the copyright, they just canceled the TM.

This just means that some one else could register the name, and make a new video game called "Blood". However, a new video game called "Blood" couldn't just pick up on the Caleb story arch unless they got permission to do so from whoever now holds the copyright to Blood. To do so would be in violation of copyright.

"The rights are either transferred to someone else, or they fall into the public domain."
The copyrights won't fall into public domain until 2092. (1997+95 years) Whoever holds the copyright now does not have to transfer anything. They can sit on it for as long as they like.

I have yet to find out who actually owns the copyright to Blood. cuxdustrial insists that WB has it, but I understand that Monolith actually did sell the copyrights (but perhaps not the TM) to GT Interactive and is now owned by Atari.

Possible Scenario:
Say Atari still owns the copyrights to Blood and Blood II, but they didn't have the TM for it. I'm not sure they could have actually publish the game without WB's OK. Now that the TM up for grabs, I think Atari could probably pick it up and have full rights to publish copies of Blood again. They still couldn't release the source code until they get the licensing issues worked out, but they could contract the game out to another team of developers to make a Blood III.
leileilol

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Post by leileilol »

The Blood game page on lith.com wrote:BLOOD™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
I'm pretty sure Atari only has distribution rights for the original SKUs only.
Blood of Nightmares
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Post by Blood of Nightmares »

DustyStyx wrote:"The rights are either transferred to someone else, or they fall into the public domain."
The copyrights won't fall into public domain until 2092. (1997+95 years) Whoever holds the copyright now does not have to transfer anything. They can sit on it for as long as they like.
Jesus Christ we're all be dead by then (and probably this community would be long gone by then leaving Blood a forgotten game)....I guess whoever made the copyright policies must be selfish cruel sadistic greedy bastards....(as what they actually are or in fact is what this current entire economic policy is based on)

Unless Capitalism gets replaced with Socialism anytime soon then everything would fall into public domain....(or it's possible to change the Copyright laws but I doubt that is going to happen leaving the former as the only possible solution...)
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

BoN, originally copyright lasted as long as a patent (15 years), but that keeps getting pushed back when new copyright dates are about to expire. I suspect that they will get pushed back again some time before 2018.

Leileilol, SKU being the gold master copy?

That TM notice on the Monolith page seems to be out of place. At the TM website, if you do a "Structured Form Search (Boolean)" search using "Blood" as a "Full Mark" AND "WARNER BROS." as "Owner name"

You will get a record back indicating that the Blood TM has been canceled, quite recently in fact: "Cancellation Date October 24, 2009"

Now there may be another TM registration for Blood in there SOMEPLACE, but it's not coming up for me, nor would I know what else to look for.
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wangho
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Post by wangho »

BON, I dont think Blood will ever be forgotten or completely dead. I feel that it will last as great things and well-made works of art tend to stay around forever, kinda like The Twilight Zone or The Beatles
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Speaking of which, I was playing FEAR multiplayer (trying it out, meh) and of the various insignias/icons your can choose to represent your player location/radio tag, one of them is the Blood hand! (both games by same company, of course: Monolith)
buildgames
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Post by buildgames »

Blood of Nightmares wrote:
DustyStyx wrote:"The rights are either transferred to someone else, or they fall into the public domain."
The copyrights won't fall into public domain until 2092. (1997+95 years) Whoever holds the copyright now does not have to transfer anything. They can sit on it for as long as they like.
Jesus Christ we're all be dead by then (and probably this community would be long gone by then leaving Blood a forgotten game)....I guess whoever made the copyright policies must be selfish cruel sadistic greedy bastards....(as what they actually are or in fact is what this current entire economic policy is based on)

Unless Capitalism gets replaced with Socialism anytime soon then everything would fall into public domain....(or it's possible to change the Copyright laws but I doubt that is going to happen leaving the former as the only possible solution...)
That's an entire different crap. Yea, copyrights last too long. We can all be thankful to the late Sonny Bono for that. If it wasnt for stupid copyrights mickey mouse, donald duck and the like would have been in the public domain a long time ago by now.
buildgames
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Post by buildgames »

Dusty, thank you for your replies and your welcome. So, is there no way to find out who might own the copyrights of any game, not just blood? There are some games in that status which I would like to find out who owns them nowadays. I know that whoever owns the rights doesnt have to do anything and can just sit on them. I asked because it wasnt clear to me all this unregistering of the blood TM. I tried doing the usual office of copyright records search, and it turned nothing. I contacted them directly and they referred me to their search. I tried contacting the attorney that was assigned back when the game company registered the game in the copyright office, no reply. What else can be done, short of posting a bounty for information on the rights owners?
Blood of Nightmares
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Post by Blood of Nightmares »

buildgames wrote:Dusty, thank you for your replies and your welcome. So, is there no way to find out who might own the copyrights of any game, not just blood? There are some games in that status which I would like to find out who owns them nowadays. I know that whoever owns the rights doesnt have to do anything and can just sit on them. I asked because it wasnt clear to me all this unregistering of the blood TM. I tried doing the usual office of copyright records search, and it turned nothing. I contacted them directly and they referred me to their search. I tried contacting the attorney that was assigned back when the game company registered the game in the copyright office, no reply. What else can be done, short of posting a bounty for information on the rights owners?
Well it just shows that the current controllers of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) obviously don't give a flying f*** about us (well under capitalism, we're designed to be their exploited slaves for them to get even richer) being parasites as they are, they only care about how much wealthier their going to get the next day. It only takes class consciousness to understand this.
Last edited by Blood of Nightmares on Fri Mar 26, 2010 05:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

buildgames, I understand the frustration.

The copyright webpage seems to be hit and miss with what pops up. For instance, at the copyright office website, you can do a search for "Monolith" and get back references to a bunch of Lithtech stuff, but only one game, "Condemned : criminal origins." However you can do a similar search for iD software and get back a whole list of Wolf3D, Doom and Quake games.

I understand that this is due to the fact that there are both public and private copyright records. From an eHow article: "Some records are not available for public search and require a fee to have someone search them for you."

If you really feel like finding out, you could always pay the fee to have some one get off their duff at the library of congress and look it up. Do note though that currently copyright law has a "catch all" clause, meaning that you don't actually have to register the item for it to be protected under copyright law.

Everyone likes a list of steps to follow right?
http://www.ehow.com/how_2095839_determi ... right.html
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Post by JuiceCartel »

This is all very interesting. So the bottom line that I want to know is, who owns Blood now? Does anybody own it? What can be done if there is no owner?
buildgames
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Post by buildgames »

....well, from this new re-release, it does seem that Atari owned the rights to Blood after all. So maybe now they can be convinced to release the source code. At least they finally acknowledged that the game exists and is commercially viable.
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