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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Author Topic: who owns starcontrol?  (Read 2457 times)
lost
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who owns starcontrol?
« on: March 01, 2005, 11:08:36 am »
I would like to know who owns starcontrol. Say for example someone was to make a version for Nokia's NGage Arena, who would they need to contact for Copyright/Legal issues?

Thank you
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Halleck
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2005, 12:11:11 pm »
As far as I know, Toys for Bob owns the intellectual property and content from the Star Control series. The Ur-Quan Masters source code is available under the GNU Public Liscense.

The name "Star Control" is, I believe, a registered Trade Mark owned by Atari.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2005, 12:11:53 pm by Halleck » Logged

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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2005, 04:46:13 pm »
Accolade has the rights to the name "Star Control," and I'm pretty sure they own most SC3-related stuff. Toys for Bob has rights to pretty much everything else.
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2005, 05:16:34 pm »
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Accolade has the rights to the name "Star Control," and I'm pretty sure they own most SC3-related stuff. Toys for Bob has rights to pretty much everything else.


So Accolade would be the ones to contact if a ngage arena version was to be looked at, correct?
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Ivan Ivanov
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2005, 06:06:23 pm »
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So Accolade would be the ones to contact if a ngage arena version was to be looked at, correct?


That depends.
If you wanted to make a ngage version of SC3 then yes.
If you wanted to port SC 1 or 2 then you would have to contact Toys For Bob. However you couldn't call it Starcontrol, even if they said 'yes'.

If you wanted to call it Starcontrol then you would have to contact Toys For Bob and Accolade.
However Accolade doesn't exist today. It was bought by something, and something was bought by Atari, so you would have to contact them.
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2005, 07:03:51 pm »
In the hopes of disambiguating all points raised:

The Star Control "franchise" has two distinct owners at the present time: Toys For Bob and Atari

Toys For Bob owns the rights to the ships and characters from the games "Star Control" and "Star Control II".  If you wanted to make a clone of StarCon or SC2, you will definitely need to clear it with them, as they own the "lion's share" of the rights you would need to license.

Atari, thanks to their last round of Mergers & Accqusitions, owns the trademark to the name "Star Control" (The trademark was originally owned by Accolade, which was bought by Infogrames, which was subsequently bought by Atari), as well as the rights to the ships and characters from "Star Control 3".  So if you wanted to make a game and call it "Star Control", you would need to license the trademark from them, and if you wanted to make a clone of SC3, ditto (although the question then becomes "WHY GOD WHY?!"  Smiley )

Of course, if you make a StarCon/SC2 clone, and call the game anything other than "Star Control", Atari can be left completely out of the loop, which would keep your licensing costs down.

I hope this clarifies things.  It is, admittedly, a bit of a mess.
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #6 on: March 09, 2005, 07:23:21 am »
just a small correction... atari didn't buy infogrames, infogrames bought the rights to the name and properties of atari from somebody else (hasbro perhaps?) and rebranded themselves as atari
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Re: who owns starcontrol?
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2005, 02:11:03 pm »
who would you make an Ngage game? Cheesy
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Deus Siddis
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You must ask yourself that question.
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2005, 11:38:40 pm »
"I would like to know who owns starcontrol."

Our Hearts!  Cry
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