Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[Svartalf]

...speaking of possible game leads, and sorry if this is derailing the topic, but, could someone please explain to me the fields in results of a US Patent and trademark office search? As some of you know, i was interested in tracking down the owner of the old games witchaven 1 and 2, and doing a trademark search in the USPTO site, didnt produce any results. I put in common popular brand names like "wolfenstein" for example, and found several entries. What i dont understand is the last field that says either LIVE or DEAD. There were many results of the query for Wolfenstein, most of them showing their status as LIVE. However, there were a few that listed as DEAD. The obvious one was the claim from the developers of the original Castle Wolfenstein game from the 80s, but there was an entry about Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, which was also listed as DEAD. What do those values mean? And, would that be helpful in finding out game rights' owners?

thanks

Live on a Trademark search would mean that it's been actively maintained (as in the fees for continuing to maintain it as a Trademark that have to be paid regularly...) and can be defended as a Trademark in Civil courts. Dead means it was filed for and then allowed to die. You're certainly free to use the word/name/trade dress that was registered and allowed to die, but you can't Trademark it at that point...

If the rights holder is no longer pursuing the game, they aren't likely to pursue trademarks on it unless they're flush with cash and intend on using the trademark elsewhere. Where you want to be looking is whom has the current registration of the rights and whom might have bought/recieved them in the Bankruptcy proceedings for hints on where to go next on that search. This means you'll need to find which bankruptcy court presided over their filing, whether or not the case filings were sealed, and check into rights registration in the Library of Congress.

[xav1r]

Live on a Trademark search would mean that it's been actively maintained (as in the fees for continuing to maintain it as a Trademark that have to be paid regularly...) and can be defended as a Trademark in Civil courts. Dead means it was filed for and then allowed to die. You're certainly free to use the word/name/trade dress that was registered and allowed to die, but you can't Trademark it at that point...

If the rights holder is no longer pursuing the game, they aren't likely to pursue trademarks on it unless they're flush with cash and intend on using the trademark elsewhere. Where you want to be looking is whom has the current registration of the rights and whom might have bought/recieved them in the Bankruptcy proceedings for hints on where to go next on that search. This means you'll need to find which bankruptcy court presided over their filing, whether or not the case filings were sealed, and check into rights registration in the Library of Congress.

Thanks for the info! Well, in this case, the rights holder is no longer around, it desintegrated, . Hmm, how would i go about searching for which bankruptcy court presided over their filing? Is there some sort of online database of bankrupcty presiding courts for each bankrupcty filing a company files for? Judging solely by the geographic location of the former owner in this case, Florida, probably the court was one in that state, but i dont know if companies can file for bankrucptcy in other states. Hmm, in which section of the library of congress should i be looking into? I already looked at the copyright.gov branch, and it still lists intracorp as the owners of the rights.

EDIT: I found what seems to be a database of all bankruptcy presiding courts in the usa. http://www.bankruptcydata.com. I also found something called the PACER database, (http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/pacerdesc.html) which is some sort of paid service that lets the public browse "case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet" (from the PACER site). I selected the southern Florida court since it meets in miami, which is where this company used to be located at. The service asks for a 0.08$ fee per search. I wonder if a search in those records would turn up anything useful.

[xav1r]

...just got this idea from a topic in the ut3 on linux thread. What about Sin Episode 1? The rights to that game now belong to MumboJumbo, a casual games company. They're not in a high-stakes area of the industry, so they probably arent hostile towards linux. Svartalf, what do you think?

[Moustacha]

...just got this idea from a topic in the ut3 on linux thread. What about Sin Episode 1? The rights to that game now belong to MumboJumbo, a casual games company. They're not in a high-stakes area of the industry, so they probably arent hostile towards linux. Svartalf, what do you think?

I don't think that could work for technical reasons *yet*. My understanding is SiN is based on the Source engine, which doesn't run on Linux...yet.

[deanjo]

...just got this idea from a topic in the ut3 on linux thread. What about Sin Episode 1? The rights to that game now belong to MumboJumbo, a casual games company. They're not in a high-stakes area of the industry, so they probably arent hostile towards linux. Svartalf, what do you think?

There already is a linux version of SiN IIRC.

[SlackerTD]

There already is a linux version of SiN IIRC.

Indeed there is... I have a copy sitting on my desk.

[Moustacha]

SiN
SiN Episodes
xav1r is referring to the latter

[Svartalf]

There already is a linux version of SiN IIRC.

That'd be SiN Episodes, Episode 1- which was something that made critical acclaim, but didn't make enough money for Ritual to stay in business as anything other than staffing for MumboJumbo, the spinoff from Ritual ages ago.

[Svartalf]

...just got this idea from a topic in the ut3 on linux thread. What about Sin Episode 1? The rights to that game now belong to MumboJumbo, a casual games company. They're not in a high-stakes area of the industry, so they probably arent hostile towards linux. Svartalf, what do you think?

That'd require a port of the Source engine in hand. Valve apparently is working towards that to accommodate RWS for the next Postal installment- as Vince Desi keeps indicating that there will be versions of Postal 3 for Mac and Linux as well as Windows.

Without Source on Linux, you're not going very far.

[Svartalf]

EDIT: I found what seems to be a database of all bankruptcy presiding courts in the usa. http://www.bankruptcydata.com. I also found something called the PACER database, (http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/pacerdesc.html) which is some sort of paid service that lets the public browse "case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet" (from the PACER site). I selected the southern Florida court since it meets in miami, which is where this company used to be located at. The service asks for a 0.08$ fee per search. I wonder if a search in those records would turn up anything useful.

The $0.08/pg fee only applies if you rack up in excess of $10 per calendar year. If you don't do that, they can't really bill you for it.

As for the search... You'll have to ask whether it's worth $10 or so to you to find out where the rights went on those old crufty titles, if only to liberate them finally...