BOOM! Swedish Paradox acquires White Wolf

Ankha wrote:

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Do you know

Who are you asking?

Anyone who wants to make the following statements:

• Why don't we just print VTES without asking Hasbro?
• Don't WW own everything? What could they not own?
• Isn't the only thing Hasbro own is the 'Deckmaster' patent/image?
• Didn't the Deckmaster patent expire? We don't need it anyway...

I'm sure there are other suitable questions and statements that require the answers to the list of questions I asked. The above list is the 'starting list'.

Ashur wrote: The answar I´ve noticed on several similar questions is that Paradox now owns EVERYTHING.

Paradox would now own everything that CCP bought when they bought WW. That is no guarantee that they own EVERYTHING for VTES. They just own everything WW/CCP did.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Why don't we just print VTES without asking Hasbro?

Because they will sue when they find out... Thats what companies do to protect their property.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Didn't the Deckmaster patent expire? We don't need it anyway...

You need Hasbro to:
- Use the Deckmaster logo (can be circumvented)
- Reprint existing cards or cards derived from existing cards (makes it harder to do it without Hasbro)
- Reuse artwork, including icons etc. (makes it impossible to do it without Hasbro)

Patent on game mechanics might have expired (2014?), but they still have IP as far as I know, which does not expire.
Anyone putting VTES in print without Hasbro, wil lose any lawsuit that follows.

GreyB wrote: You need Hasbro to:
- Use the Deckmaster logo (can be circumvented)
- Reprint existing cards or cards derived from existing cards (makes it harder to do it without Hasbro)
- Reuse artwork, including icons etc. (makes it impossible to do it without Hasbro)

Facts or speculation?

agzocgud wrote:

GreyB wrote: You need Hasbro to:
- Use the Deckmaster logo (can be circumvented)
- Reprint existing cards or cards derived from existing cards (makes it harder to do it without Hasbro)
- Reuse artwork, including icons etc. (makes it impossible to do it without Hasbro)

Facts or speculation?

Speculation of course, but extremely plausible with facts that are known to the community.

Compiled from numerous posts about this topic (unless anyone can disprove it, but no one has thusfar).
IP on printed VTES until and including HttB, was in the hands of WotC and thus Hasbro.
Unless IP has been handed over or sold to WoD, you will need Hasbro.

Derivatory work and concepts can also fall under IP, meaning that they could try to sue you for printing a card that looks and smells like a blooddoll. One could win this trial, but they can sue you for each and every single card that looks like a card they already printed and you know they printed a lot.

In short, almost certainly, one would need to be good buddies with Hasbro for a print reboot.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: Don't WW own everything? What could they not own?

When V:TES was revived by White Wolf, Steve Wieck stated that they co-owned it, and that White Wolf paid a licence to Wizards for that. Previously, Wizards were using the WoD and V:tM elements under licence.

Steve Wieck, in 2000 :

Steve Wieck wrote: BTW, White Wolf and WOTC still co-own V:TES. We simply reversed the license
for it, so now we publish it and pay WOTC a royalty on sales rather than
vice versa.

It was - in part - the fact that this licence wasn't renewed that led to V:TES dying. CCP appeared to have been looking to get rid of a lot of their White Wolf physical products, but as I recall some initial work had been done on "the next set" so it didn't look like CCP were going to kill it at the point of the renewal.



It's entirely possible that some of the intellectual property in V:TES was transferred to White Wolf, but it's also possible that some of it was being used under licence, or some other arrangement. For example:

- the intellectual property involved in the card text of any card created by the Wizards of the Coast design teams

- the intellectual property involved in the rules and rulebook. There are long-standing issues in gaming law about the copyrightability of individual mechanics, and that sort of thing. But whole works - such as an entire rulebook - are protected by copyright law. White Wolf (LSJ) clearly updated it, edited it etc., but they may have done so under licence. This also gets into the whole area of derivative works.

- card art. This is one of those areas where things could get extra weird, because the original artist may have retained some rights, or may have licensed it to Wizards (or, for that matter, White Wolf/CCP) for a certain period of time or for particular uses etc. Card art can be changed, of course, and has been on a variety of library cards - but would you want to reprint older vampires with different art?

- logos (not the name, the logo). Does Hasbro have any intellectual property rights over the V:TES logo? Was that transferred to White Wolf? Was it used under licence?

- symbols. Who designed the symbols for things like "political action", or "Quietus"? Who owns any intellectual property rights for them?