Battlezone Copy Rights - News

[Killer AK]

i just read that battlezone had it's copy rights bought by a small company from bankrupt atari?
anyone have any thoughts about this?
maybe a battlezone 3 is on the way one day?
i thought there was a lot of copy right holders for this game? how does that work with activision involved, electronic arts-pandemc, evolve, and atari?

Killer AK
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Re: copy rights

Postby AHadley » Fri Jul 25, 2014 3:18 pm
To the best of our knowledge Rebellion knows the name Battlezone and the intellectual property for the 1980 game and its later clones (including the PSP and XBLA versions). The rights to the PC FPS/RTS games are in Activision's IP Hell.
battlezone.wikia.com needs your help!

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AHadley
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Re: copy rights

Postby Killer AK » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:33 pm
i wrote rebellion on facebook and e-mail from thier website asking for any battlezone news and if they owned all the rights to bz1 and bz2.
they yet to reply but if we were able to show some support it might encourage them to release some news.
rebellion is currently advertising sniper elite 3 on facebook. check it out and don't forget to submit a battlezone question

(thanks Ahadley, that was a great reply. hopefully more news will come to light.)

[Dx.]

Atari owns Battlezone (PC) rights, it wasn't part of the sell. (my opinion)
When you talk about Battlezone to Atari, it means the 1980 arcade game and the psp Bz and what ever else Atari made.

[Ded10c]

Dx and I have had arguments about this three times to date; his argument is based on a document that has not been seen publicly or stated to exist by anyone other than Kahless, so I can hardly consider it.

According to an article I originally linked when the news first came about (but has since become unavailable), the sale to Rebellion included only the original Battlezone and Battlezone 2000 (later ones having been developed by Black Pearl, Paradigm and Stainless respectively - I apologise for the mistake made in the quoted post). Until new evidence comes to light, this is all we know for certain. Everything else is extrapolated.

Whether the Activision games transferred back to Atari or not is the subject of the above document, so I obviously must assume convention was followed unless it is clearly proven otherwise.

[Dx.]

If Kahless says the paralegal told him this after researching it, I consider it true.
If you can't accept it, contact the paralegal and ask her yourself.

[Ded10c]

The contract itself is a primary source. Ideally that's what we want to see.

Assuming she read it herself, the paralegal is a secondary source, Kahless is tertiary and you are quarternary. With each step there is exponential added potential for misinterpretation, something that is very possible given the circumstances and nature of the request. I've tried to contact the legal department personally, but have yet to receive a reply.

[Dx.]

How did you attempt to contact them?

[Ded10c]

E-mail and post. I had serious difficulties in phoning cross-continent (the wonders of British Telecom in action). If confirmation is made it'd be nice to see the messages posted publicly (or at least shared privately) between a three or four people so we can make absolutely certain that there's no room for mistake.

[Killer AK]

my attempts have had no response.

[Dx.]

I have sent a letter to the paralegal at Activision, in the letter i also asked for a copy of the part of the contract concerning the ownership/rights transfer to Atari and a couple other things.

I'll let you know if i hear back from her.

[Ded10c]

Oh yes, please do. It'd be nice to have this settled, then I can decide whether or not to chase a writing position at Rebellion (them being less than an hour-and-a-half away).