Who owns it?

LeHah

LeHah

212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
A recent email from Peter Telep asks a rather good question: Who the heck owns the Wing Commander franchise? Is it EA? It can't be Roberts, can it? This is all Telep could say:
I'm afraid I don't own the copyright to Pilgrim Truth. My publisher tells me that all rights have reverted to "the wing commander people." Whoever owns the rights to the whole wing commander franchise also owns the rights to
publish my book. The next step would be to find out who can do something with this at that company and seek permission to "sell" or self-publish the book.
Click to expand...


Lets see what we can do for this poor sod...:)
 
EA owns Wing Commander. I think possibly Digital Anvil owns the rights to anything movie related, but I'm not sure about that.
 
Hades: Your answer is exactly why I'm so confused! Who owns what when it comes to the rights of a Wing Commander movie novel? EA owns the WC series but the movie was put out by Fox/DA/EA. So, who owns what!?

LOAF: How do you plan to take care of this? :)
 
why don't we just pitch in and buy EA to make more games?

edit: you got 5$ from me! :)

[Edited by RATM on 05-29-2001 at 22:07]
 
Well... There ARE several mods in the works... I'm part of the Wing Commander Invasion crew (I know, it's pretty awful right now, but the models and weapons are from Prophecy (literally)... and I'm working on perfecting the game structure! We have a single player campaign in the works, and there may even be movie sequences in the works... ;)
 
To Lehah Re: Who owns it

If memory serves me correctly, EA (who owns Origin) owns the WC gaming franchise. When Chris Roberts left, while Origin was still working on Prophecy, he retained all movie and television rights to the game. I suspect it was some sort of settlement.
I just wish he hadn't allowed Origin to retain the game rights, since the reason why he left was because of artistic differences with the Origin execuitve over Prophecy. Hence why Prophecy was not as popular as WC III, or WC IV. By now we would be enjoying all three sequels to the Prophecy storyline. The next one was planned to be called "WC Strike Force", likely a continuation of the story from the end of WC SO.
 
It wasn't really a settlement... he got the rights later, and I think they've expired now (IIRC, not sure). Also, his 'artistic' differences were probably more about the huge amount of money he likes to spend on games.

TC
 
The rights to make a WC movie were a 'gift' -- Origin hoped that it'd be a big success and WC would prosper... the movie and TV rights have since reverted back to EA.
 
Whoever owns it, the lawyers could well be busy if the WC name is resurrected by anyone for anything...
 
So, if that is the case, then Telep would have to go to EA to get the right to publish his book. Or would Harper Collins have to talk to Baen to get the rights? Legal bullshit sucks!!!
 
OK, I imagine there could still be some licenses that are valid, in which case the company could be use WC for what it wants within the license. But if you wanted to do something NOT currently covered by a license, that is when the trouble could start.

Legal bullshit, too true.
 
Legal 'stuff' is there for a reason, it's just that it's often misused... or wrapped in several layers of red tape.
 
Baen's contract with EA over the WC series is over. Forstchen had a chance to renew it but lost interest in the series since he had filled his "quota" of novels. Andrew Keith, who co-wrote "False Colors" and I think the WC3 novel, was suppose to pick up the series but God had other plans and decided to kill him instead, that Bastard!

In other words, the rights of a WC/Video Game novel is returned to EA, but since the WC MOVIE was a joint venture between EA, 20th Century Fox and Digital Anvil...who has the rights? Not Telep or Harper Collins, according to Telep himself.
 
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