Quote from: estar;739171Orphaned works are a serious cultural problem right now. Especially for those work that are on perishable medium like film and recordings. We already have lost stuff from the 20s and 30s due to people unable to clear the rights to reproduce them.

I feel that 28 years + 28 years with active renewal more than sufficient as copyright term length.

Theres been a few big debates on that over at BGG. The most recent was when GameZone was doing their HeroQuest game and early on claiming that HQ was abandonware. Then claiming that they did not need to credit the original designer or pay him. Etc. Despite the game mechanics having been used in HeroScape by the original designer as late as 2010.

A weird one from the opposite direction around 2009 was Hasbro bought up the rights to Micronauts and Micro-Man. And to date has done about nothing with them.

The HQ case you describe does seem pretty unreasonable; this game is recently in print and obviously has been developed and invested in within the last couple of years. So, I totally agree 'fan-ware' is inappropriate here (other than individuals and gaming groups working with and trading around files, which I consider fair use).

The games that are foremost in my mind are more like the old film example. Some of these were last committed to hard copy 35 years ago, and were printed and bound on the cheap. They are likely in their last decade, outside of a few collector's vacuum-sealed copies.

My personal reaction to this dilemma is that I'm creating the documents I personally believe should exist as archival editions of some my favorites of these games, and I'll just sit on them for the time being. They may not be widely available to others, but at least they exist!

Quote from: Larsdangly;739139So, what happens when a copyright to some game is held by a company that dissolves? If none of the individual authors hold the rights to a game (or module or whatever), and the company that does hold them evaporated decades ago, who would you even pay if you wanted to buy the rights?

The company's assets would still belong to the company's owners or shareholders.  If they were dead, they'd belong to their estates.  Who would you pay?  Sometimes, things just get too convoluted to make that feasible.  Heck, we can all think of some real world examples.

Beyond that, companies don't always -- or even often -- dissolve.  Let's take Metagaming and TFT for an example.  Howard Thompson may have closed shop, and one can expect he paid off the company's liabilities, but Metagaming may well just have gone dormant, especially if he was the sole owner/shareholder.  Whether Texas has particular rules regarding that, I have no idea, but that still doesn't turn Metagaming's IP into public domain.

Quote from: estar;739167In the United States if the designer created the work as a work for hire then he has no rights.

That's been the usual contract in comicbooks. However shabby the treatment in the long run may be -- and the comicbook business has been pretty shabby -- it's no bait and switch. If you don't want to work on the plantation, you can choose the other set of headaches that come with being an entrepreneur.

There's a middle route of creator-owned but not creator-published comics, more like regular book and magazine publishing. Illustrators, and especially cartoonists (in the sense of people who both write and draw the story) have an edge there.

Quote from: Omega;739180A weird one from the opposite direction around 2009 was Hasbro bought up the rights to Micronauts and Micro-Man. And to date has done about nothing with them.

If what you think is weird is Hasbro doing nothing with stuff it owns, then you don't know Hasbro.

Quote from: Phillip;739264If what you think is weird is Hasbro doing nothing with stuff it owns, then you don't know Hasbro.

Well weird in that they went to the trouble of buying up the rights from all parties and then have done nothing after an initial fanfare.

As opposed to just burying games in mid stride. Battleship: Galaxies is never going to see the expansions it was supposed to get for recent example.

Hasbro has though been parcelling out some of its acquired stock of OOP games to other companies. FFG has picked up a few now when not doing Games Workshop related games.

Quote from: Phillip;739262That's been the usual contract in comicbooks. However shabby the treatment in the long run may be -- and the comicbook business has been pretty shabby -- it's no bait and switch. If you don't want to work on the plantation, you can choose the other set of headaches that come with being an entrepreneur.

Yep.  Almost every time I've been offered a choice between up front dollars and royalties.  Without exception, I've chosen the former.  In every case, it was the right call to make.  If I hadn't wanted the deal, I wouldn't have taken the deal.

Quote from: Omega;739180A weird one from the opposite direction around 2009 was Hasbro bought up the rights to Micronauts

Micronauts! Blast from the past!
I really liked the Marvel comic book (the first run). For a comic book based on a rather bland toy figure line it was quite dark, like the episode on Acroyear's homeworld, touching themes like genocide and cold-blooded murder/revenge.
It was a darker Star Wars (complete with Vader-stand-in and a rag-tag group of rebels) plus a very campy (and unnessecary) Captain Universe linking the property to the Marvel universe. And Mike Golden artwork.
(Today I can only laugh about some of the characters - Princess Mari's psychedelic costume...)
(And is it true that Micronauts once had X-Men-like circulation?)

And regarding the rights:
While some of the characters and especially items and ships were based on toys (Acroyear, Time Traveller, Biotron, Baron Karza) some characters were created by Marvel and remained with them when the toy license ended: Marionette, Bug, Arcturus Rann.