There are three types of intellectual property (IP). Trademarks, copyrights, & patents. zZaRDoZz says that he does not understand how WBIE's cancellation leads to Atari's loss of rights. Atari does not have the rights to the Blood series, WBIE obtained the rights to the blood series from Atari. Just as Blizzard obtained the rights to the Redneck Rampage from Vivendi. Just as Bethesda obtained the rights to Fallout from Interplay. Just as Inxile obtained the rights to Wasteland from Electronic Arts. And so on and so forth. Atari is no longer part of the equation and literally and legally, has nothing to do with Blood. It is through the trademark records that we see this transference of rights. If you still have questions, you can check the COPYRIGHT records to Blood, which will confirm and verify everything I have said. It is a legal witness to what I have said. I cannot, sadly, directly link you to the records because of session limitations and expirations, I can give you this link.
http://www.copyright.gov/
Go there and click on 'Search Records' which is a tab at the top which is farthest to the right. Two options will appear 'Online Records' & 'Other Services'. Click on 'Online Records', ignore 'Other Services' as that is for records prior to January 1, 1978. When you click on 'Online Records' (or rather 'Search the Catalog' which is in the Online Records section) you can preform basic or extensive searches. I have provided you with both the Trademark & Copyright records to the Blood series.
Link:
http://cocatalog.loc.gov/
Not that I would ever do anything so drastic as to knock the thread back on track but is it possible for Atari to keep it's rights as publisher and use a different company to produce a Blood game? Say for example, a Raven or some other outfit?
No. The publisher either owns the IP or doesn't, if it is the developer, then the publisher has NO rights over the IP. For example, 3DRealms owns the rights to the Duke Nukem series. TakeTwo does not, therefore TakeTwo cannot act as a publisher and beseech another developer to develop a Duke Nukem title.
Some one really needs to make a clarification about the difference between Copyright and Trademark, before you guys get to wild eyed.
A Trademark allows an entity to procures the exclusive right to use a specific NAME for a product. These can last indefinitely, but after the 5th year, a company must pay a fee to keep the TM alive.
Yes, I've clarified this and provided people with the resource to verify it themselves. You'll see that what I've said about the Blood trademark AND copyright is true.
I saw this comment over at PostMortem forums.
As far as I understood, Monolith abandoned the Blood trademark, but Atari is still supposed to be the owner of Blood rights.
Atari is not the owner of Blood rights.
Wikipedia says
In terms of copyrights and ownership, Monolith sold the rights for Blood to GT Interactive who published the games; the company was later purchased by Infogrames which has since been renamed to Atari.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_(video_game)
This is a blatant lie. Wikipedia's statement is mostly false, while true that Monolith sold the rights, it fails to mention that Warner Brothers obtained them. And shows just how Wikipedia often lacks nuance and balance. It should read "In terms of copyrights and onwership, Warner Bros. has the rights to Blood."