The whole Duke Nukem Forever thing got me thinking, What happens to the IP if the owner shuts down, but doesn't sell it off to another company ? If the legal entity doesn't exist anymore it doesn't make sense for them to own property, the IP magically becoming public domain doesn't seem right either, and the IP becoming unusable by anyone just sounds crazy.

IANAL, but IIRC they're legally required to sell off all assets (which includes copyright ownerships) before ceasing existence -- anything not so dealt with falls into a legal void.

Quote: Original post by MrMark
The whole Duke Nukem Forever thing got me thinking, What happens to the IP if the owner shuts down, but doesn't sell it off to another company ?

If the legal entity doesn't exist anymore it doesn't make sense for them to own property, the IP magically becoming public domain doesn't seem right either, and the IP becoming unusable by anyone just sounds crazy.

When a company goes bankrupt, a receiver will be appointed, who's responsible for getting as much money for the company's property as he can get, which will then be used to (partially) repay the debts the company had. I don't assume there's any kind of time limit to this, so I assume that as long as nobody has offered to buy it, it will just be held by the receiver. This receiver is acting on behalf of the debtors, and not on his own account though, so I don't think it will be very likely that the receiver will just say "forget about it", and make it public domain, as that would actually mean him letting his clients down.

Quote: Original post by MrMark
The whole Duke Nukem Forever thing got me thinking, What happens to the IP if the owner shuts down, but doesn't sell it off to another company ?

If the legal entity doesn't exist anymore it doesn't make sense for them to own property, the IP magically becoming public domain doesn't seem right either, and the IP becoming unusable by anyone just sounds crazy.

Just say it, you want to one-man the DNF project [smile]

I think the IP of DnF was still owned, by a publisher. I forgot which one. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it's Take-Two. Sadly I can't confirm it since all gaming news sites are blocked from work.

afaik 3D Realms, or at least someone there still owns it. Take2 only have the publishing rights.

If the company is being shut down but doesn't have to sell off things to cover costs/debt then I see no reason why they would have to sell the IP.

When a business is dissolved, the assets continue to be owned by the owners of the company.


If a company has many owners through shareholders or through exercised options or other methods, then the owners have a share of the ownership. It can be extremely complex, with ownership being split thousands of ways. That is part of the reason many IPs become abandoned, where no business is willing to pick it up for fear of lawsuit.


I don't know of anything in the news stating what will happen to their assets. You can be assured that they have a team of lawyers who have been working on the business side for quite some time. 3D Realms did have a partner, who is also very likely to be heavily involved in the closure.

Quote: Original post by phantom
afaik 3D Realms, or at least someone there still owns it. Take2 only have the publishing rights.

If the company is being shut down but doesn't have to sell off things to cover costs/debt then I see no reason why they would have to sell the IP.

Well, they'd have to transfer it to someone in that case. Most likely the owner of the company, or if it was an LLC or something that members would have to sort it out.

Quote: Original post by Gazillion

Quote: Original post by MrMark
The whole Duke Nukem Forever thing got me thinking, What happens to the IP if the owner shuts down, but doesn't sell it off to another company ?

If the legal entity doesn't exist anymore it doesn't make sense for them to own property, the IP magically becoming public domain doesn't seem right either, and the IP becoming unusable by anyone just sounds crazy.

Just say it, you want to one-man the DNF project [smile]

Guilty [smile]

If I start down and develop a voxel-based, ray tracing game engine (allowing fully destructible environment and movie grade visuals) by the time it's done hardware would of caught up to the point where such approaches would be feasible. It would be teh best game evar !!!111 1!