ATARI 2600 games : Who owns the copyrights ??

[Lord-Chaos]

Hi ,

 

there are many ATARI 2600 available which are quite rare , others have been remade by companies like HES,Salu (white label) or Telegames (some of the Activision games or the Mattel stuff etc.).

 

If it´s possible to get the copyrights for rare games,it would be possible to remake rare games with box/manual.

 

Anyone knows something about the copyrights/who has them ?

 

AFAIK the company who bought ATARI (Infrogrames) should have the copyrights for all ATARI games.

 

If a company could get the rights for some rare games , they could make new ones and sell them.

 

Would be great to have new,boxed versions of very rare or unreleased games.

 

Thimo

[The Night Phantom]

AFAIK the company who bought ATARI (Infrogrames) should have the copyrights for all ATARI games.

Sometimes licensing issues get in the way. Atari’s licenses for such properties as the Pac-Man games, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Snoopy and the Red Baron (to cite a few examples) have probably expired.

[ATARIPITBULL]

I knew that Infogames bought Atari, but I did not know that Infogames had been bought out?

 

[The Night Phantom]

I knew that Infogames bought Atari, but I did not know that Infogames had been bought out?

I think you’re misreading Lord-Chaos’ post: Infogrames (that’s the correct spelling, by the way) is the company that bought the Atari Corp. assets (from Hasbro).

[Big_Mo]

The copyright issue came up on the RGVC newsgroup years ago. Someone claimed that the old Mystique games were probably public domain because the company was out of business. I logged into the U.S. Copyright Office via the net and within an hour found out what company held the copyrights to Mystique's properties.

 

In general, whoever takes possession of the property of a folded company owns their copyrights as well.

 

Some things do fall into the public domain, but you have to wait for the copyright to expire and not be renewed.

 

As to Infogrammes, I think what was being said was that they bought Atari...not that they were themselves bought.