Pertaining to the copyright question

[Gene Makely]

The plot thickens...

Per the Copyright Office website, under their "Copyright Basics" link:

"TRANSFER OF COPYRIGHT
Any or all of the copyright owner's exclusive rights or any subdivision of
those rights may be transferred, but the transfer of exclusive rights is not
valid unless that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the
rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent. Transfer of a right on
a nonexclusive basis does not require a written agreement.

A copyright may also be conveyed by operation of law and may be bequeathed by
will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate
succession.

Copyright is a personal property right, and it is subject to the various
state laws and regulations that govern the ownership, inheritance, or
transfer of personal property as well as terms of contracts or conduct of
business. For information about relevant state laws, consult an attorney.

Transfers of copyright are normally made by contract. The Copyright Office
does not have any forms for such transfers. The law does provide for the
recordation in the Copyright Office of transfers of copyright ownership.
Although recordation is not required to make a valid transfer between the
parties, it does provide certain legal advantages and may be required to
validate the transfer as against third parties. For information on
recordation of transfers and other documents related to copyright, request
Circular 12, "Recordation of Transfers and Other Documents."

I phoned the Copyright Office (which is located just down the street from
where I work, incidentally), and spoke with an Information Specialist, who
informed me that because Recordation of Transfers are voluntary and not
required, I'd have to go to the parties involved to obtain any such
information.

So, its either back to Hasbro for an official answer (from someone who
actually knows), or to Monarch.
~Gene



In a message dated Fri, 27 Oct 2000 12:06:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Maouse
<maouse at FULTON-NET.COM> writes:

<< Two problems maybe (maybe only one?)

1. When did AH go out of business?  If they were defunkt before the sale
presented in this article, who had rights to their intellectual property?

2. Although this is a nice "newspaper" article, and it does go to the
length of stating that they bought ONE FRPG, it does not state the one we
are wondering about.  100-200 is kinda vauge for my tastes.  Also, I would
note that despite the "takeover" no intellectual property rights appear to
have been exchanged (per Copyright office anyway).  Monarch Avalon is still
a subsiduary of Hasbro with it's own set of rights... although I'd guess
Hasbro could get them to allow the reproduction of their property.

Add to this the fact that Hasbro denies having bought the Powers & Perils
title and what are we left with?

If AH (itself, not it's parent co.) went defunkt before transfering legal
rights to this game to it's parent company (which may well have never taken
place), and/or the parent company did not file for an extension or transfer
of rights (from what I've read they had to do it within 1 year (ie. 1999))
then they are no longer entitled to Copyright protections.

It was apparent from the letter from Hasbro they did not get the copyrights
to this title.  I guess the last thing to do would be to write Monarch
Avalon (if they still exist).

I have to wonder if this is a necessary step, however, as I could find no
record of title changes between AH and MA, meaning that the titles Hasbro
got were titles MA owned and AH may have helped produce, but the title in
question may have been entirely AH's intellectual property and never
(apparently from records I found and posted) transfered to anyone.

In a nutshell, the parent company does not necessarily OWN the copyright of
its subsiduary.  The subsiduary can then be sold with rights intact rather
than having to take rights from the parent company.  I believe this is the
way business is usually conducted.

In this case the subsiduary went defunkt and all of it's intellectual
property is probably public domain.  The parent company, which had holdings
of the games listed in the article, was bought and became a subsiduary of
another company.  Now it still owns it's copyrights, but is allowing the
parent company to publish it's material.  But since the sub-subsiduary
company no longer exists, and it's property was not transfered(as far as I
can find out from the copyright office) within 1 year (to someone with
valid claim... which MA was not even in this particular case; per original
copyright listing only AH had the legal right to do this) it is now public
domain (probably if legality follows logic, which sometimes it does).

any copyright lawyer chat rooms out there? sheesh...

-Marcel aka maouse
 >>