Do licenses created by a company dissolve, void, or simply invalidate if said company bankrupts / sells assets? So I made a previous question about a dissolved or possibly bankrupted company that I wanted to use assets of for a fan-made remaster / remake of their game. The said company has given access to their art / assets under this agreement: This Fan Kit License is an agreement between you and Bytebin LLC. By accessing or using the Fan Kit, you agree to be bound by and comply with the terms of this License and the Deepworld Terms of Service (http://deepworldgame.com/terms). Deepworld has an amazing community and we wish to allow our players to be as creative as possible when sharing Deepworld experiences, information, and opinions. We encourage you to use the Assets contained within this Fan Kit to enliven any Deepworld-related websites, Facebook pages, apps, or other online spaces (&quot;Fan Sites&quot;), as long as it is in accordance with this License. If you violate the agreement, we may contact you and try to resolve the matter, or pursue legal action if we are unable to come to a resolution. Bytebin may, in its sole discretion, terminate the right to use the Fan Kit for any reason whatsoever with or without notice. USAGE Bytebin grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Fan Kit solely for the purpose of enhancing Deepworld-related topics on your own Fan Sites. RULES You are not permitted to charge a fee to visit, use, or acquire your Fan Site. You are not permitted to sell any products that feature any of the assets, including those you have made alterations to. You ARE permitted to monetize your Fan Sites with advertisements. If you monetize with advertisements, you are not permitted to use or display any of the Fan Kit assets in your advertisements or imply that Bytebin sponsors your Fan Site. You are not permitted to manufacture or distribute physical items such as T-shirts that bear any Deepworld trademarks or assets. You may make modifications to the assets, but Bytebin still retains full ownership and copyright of your derivative works. Alteration does not change any of the other stipulations of this License. All Fan Sites must include a Bytebin copyright and agreement notice: &quot;Deepworld assets are Copyright 2014 Bytebin LLC. Bytebin is not affiliated with and does not endorse, sponsor, or specifically approve this site.&quot; Bytebin reserves all rights not expressly granted in this agreement. I want to know if a license is upheld, even if a company goes bankrupt, or is dissolved. Are said licenses transferred if the assets are sold? I noticed this specific line in the license: Bytebin may, in its sole discretion, terminate the right to use the Fan Kit for any reason whatsoever with or without notice.` Which I'm assuming in layman's terms means &quot;We can cancel your right to use the assets at any time, with or without notice&quot; Although we never DID receive notice, I still don't think they ever &quot;terminated&quot; the license, it was part of a fan kit available to community to use in Websites and Games. (Art and assets) I'm not super focused on the details of this specific license (Although that would be nice to know about), Im more solely curious about how this license functions after the company is dissolved. Assuming since the dev team and founders have terminated all social accounts and the company ran out of money to host servers, it seems they went bankrupt. However, I have not found any account of a new shareholder or owner of the assets, its highly unlikely they sold the assets, they most likely split it up between the different artists and the developers of the game. And assuming all of that together, the company still technically exists, as its members are still &quot;in contact&quot; and still own the game and its assets, is it possible I can still &quot;use&quot; this license in a legal environment to some extent? I highly doubt this license allows for the creation of an entire game with original art, or even an app, it seems to mainly focus on using the art in Websites. What can you guys tell me?
Bankruptcy does not normally end a contract Of course, bankruptcy may cause the bankrupt to breach the contract because they can’t fulfill their obligations allowing the other party to terminate it. Assuming this doesn’t happen, a contract is both an asset and liability of the bankrupt company in that they create both benefits and obligations. As such, it must be dealt with by the bankruptcy trustee like all other assets and liabilities. This particular contract creates a liability on the other IP assets of the company and, in a sense, is part of those assets. So, whoever ended up with those assets has them encumbered by this license (whether they know it or not). If those assets were sold then the buyer is bound, if they were distributed to the creditors or shareholders then they are bound.
What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.
Most games have a TOS to playing that include provisions such as sales of in game items through out of game currencies (i.e. real world money changes hands for digital product or account). I believe Pokemon does have this as part of the TOS which could get you and potential customers banned from competition and possibly the modern online trade features, but am unable to look at the current TOS to verify. It should not be hard to find such a document and read for yourself.
Since the Steam ID contains or may contain enough information for it to be possible to link your account to you as a physical person, it would definitely be considered "personal data" according to Article 4 of the GDPR. However, by agreeing to the DOTA2 terms of service, you have given consent for them to show your information to other players (or at least that is included in most terms of service I have read for other games. I have not read the one for DOTA2 specifically). Replays are an interesting corner case. If download of replays are only possible for other players or if the wording of the ToS says that you consent to displaying your user ID to anybody, that would mean that they would have covered their bases. As long as they comply with other parts of GDPR, like "the right to erasure" (Article 17) that is. If the API is accessible to anyone and not covered by the ToS you might have a case. If you only want to remove the traceability between you and the replays, you can always evoke Article 17 and delete your account.
Just assuming for the sake of this particular answer that everything happens in the U.S.: I'm not sure about the particular example of Open ZFS. The registration in the USPTO Records is in Oracle's name. Using OpenZFS for distributing the same kind of software as the now closed-source ZFS would seem to be infringing to me absent a license. Maybe Oracle just tolerates the use of the "ZFS" component by third-parties since they decided at some point to license the software under an open source license. In that case, they may have a dilution (http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/TrademarkDilution.aspx) problem and the mark may be invalid. If the mark is invalid, anybody can pretty much do whatever they want with it. That said, assuming for sake of discussion that the mark is valid, there is indeed such a thing that is similar to the copyright fair use in trademarks (in the U.S. at least). It's called "nominative fair use". You can read more about it here: http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/FairUse.aspx Bottom line is that under the nominative fair use doctrine it's generally ok for party A to use party B's trademark to refer to whatever party B is doing, even to sell products and services related to whatever party B is doing. As per the INTA document I just linked above, its for example ok to "use “iPhone” in non-stylized form on packaging for phone cases to indicate that it is usable with iPhone 6." Having a website (even with third-party ads) that discuss ZFS-related matters is similar to the iPhone example in my mind. Having a domain name that contains the mark seems riskier, but it's not necessarily downright forbidden. See: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Sales,_U.S.A._v._Tabari
Ownership is a fundamental concept in property law which can be difficult to apply to software, such as computer games. A physical record of information, such as a game disc, a piece of paper with a product key on it, or a computer hard drive with software installed on it, is personal property (chattels). You own these things. However, copyright law restricts what you can legally do with them. For example, the copyright holder generally has the exclusive right to make a copy of a program, which would generally include downloading (and saving) a game ISO. In recent decades, anti-circumvention provisions have been added to national copyright laws. These generally make it illegal to use cracks and other techniques for circumventing DRM, even if you “own” a copy of the software. What is “owned” is the right to assert a claim in court (a chose in action), which is also a kind of property. Specifically, the right to use proprietary software, or software license, is generally understood as a bundle of contractual rights, often documented in an end user license agreement. (While these contractual rights are a kind of property that can be owned, “ownership” of software can also refer to the rights of the copyright holder, which the more limited rights of a licensee are derived from.) Actually determining the legal effect of a software license is complex. As it is intended to create contractual rights, the terms of the contract (license agreement) are important, but not determinative. Consumer law may impose standard “fair dealing” terms which could have complex effects on the rights associated with a digital product in a particular jurisdiction. Because of the low money value involved, these complex legal issues are rarely tested in court. The specific questions you pose all appear to breach copyright or anti-circumvention law. However, you may have acquired contractual rights, including implied rights associated with your purchase of chattels, or dealings with a platform operator like Steam, which limit the copyright holder’s ability to take action against you. You may also have the right to do things that fall within a fair use or fair dealing exception in your jurisdiction. Again, the law is often untested, especially outside of the United States, because it is rarely in the parties’ interest to litigate. However, the exceptions to anti-circumvention law are often different to, and less permissive than, the exceptions to copyright. To further research your questions in a particular jurisdiction, I would look for exceptions to copyright and anti-circumvention law which protect consumers’ rights, if any, to back up or resell copies of licensed software.
There are 95 Jedi trademarks on file. Tons of them are dead. The word &quot;Jedi&quot; itself is trademarked by Lucasarts (a subsidiary of Disney) under Registration Number 3794988, listed for print products and clothes, 2858244 for digital mediums, 2595365 for toys, 2823661 for entertainment services. Now, most jedi marks are Lucasarts, but not all. Serial 88625298 was &quot;Jedi Ooolong&quot;, filed by Kombucha tea, which did get processed, filed and a denial/request for an amendment was sent back, and 6 months later the mark was canceled for non-answering. The request contained this line: Registration of the applied-for mark is refused because of a likelihood of confusion with the mark in U.S. Registration No. 5581531. Trademark Act Section 2(d), 15 U.S.C. §1052(d); see TMEP §§1207.01 et seq. Registration number 5581531 is/was &quot;The Last Jedi&quot; for juices, the rest of the document goes over why it is denied. Serial 88672347 is &quot;Gediforce&quot; for &quot;Downloadable computer programs for data processing; downloadable computer programs designed to estimate costs and health impact of various gestational diabetes mellitus medical screening choices&quot; - and this mark exists since about 2012 in Denmark and 2019 in the US, and granted this April. No conflicting marks. Serial 90150034 is &quot;Chris Jedi&quot; owned by a music label for music, clothes, and entertainment services - recently filed but not yet granted or even given to an examiner.
In general, unless the license contains a clause which allows it to be modified at a later date through some defined means (publication, revocation of existing license etc) then you are free to continue to use the existing version of the software under the original license terms. So make sure you pin your versions! Look out for clauses such as exists in the GPL which allow the recipient of the distributed binary or code to choose what version of the GPL to apply if the original author does not state (GPLv2 Clause 9) as they then allow recipients to bind you, the distributor, to versions you might not agree with (eg the switch to GPLv3 with its patents clauses).