Elite / Frontier Who owns Elite?

[Cmdr Sharky]

Just out of curiosity, who owns the copyright on the original Elite? Did Braben & Bell retain copyright, or did it go to Acornsoft? If it went to Acornsoft, what happened to it eventually, i.e. who owns it now?

And if Acornsoft didn't own the copyright, what about other works that they did own? Does anyone know the history well enough to say who owns the copyright now?

 

[Gibbon]

Does it really matter? With ED coming out, who owns the original is somewhat moot. I mean you look at Oolite, best version of the original Elite out there, vast improvement over the original in fact. The guy who made that gave it to the community to work on. Original Elite is still a fine program but is rapidly becoming a footnote in gaming history which it fully deserves. That said, why worry about who owns it when the new improved shiny 21st century version is closing in on us?

 

[JeffRyan]

Still a valid question.

 

[gunbladelad]

I think Braben and Bell shared the copyright, but I do recall the two had a bit of a falling out.

As Ian Bell's done nothing with the Elite name since (aside from his website, IIRC), and David Braben has (with 2 sequels finished and a third in the works), I'm going to guess that the core copyright sits with David Braben himself.

 

[au4049q]

ownership

I've had warnings from the moderators to not post anything cantankerous.
At risk of attracting another warning:

If you asked the legal department at Sony entertainment, they'd say that they have papers proving ownership of a lot of music and video rights. If you asked a pirate bay member, they'd say that most of it is public domain.

I reckon that ownership is largely a matter of whose papers to believe. If everyone believed that every broadcast song or video were public domain then no new ones would ever get made to high standards because there was no mechanism to recycle disposable income of consumers of broadcast entertainment into high quality production of broadcastable entertainment. This is where kickstarter is shown to be necessary: if enough people remember the authornames on their favourite computer game but few remember news reports of Acornsoft selling out to someone who onsold to someone else, then the authornames are worth more than legal papers of copyright ownership because more consumers recognise that name as someone who can make a really good computer game, if we make available enough kickstarter funding for them to skip the corporate nonsense and hire creatives and programmers.

That still does not answer the "who owns it" question though. I'd rephrase the question to "who should I pay for that if I think I might like their product". Giving money to a big entertainment corporation seems lossy by comparison to alternatives.

 

[Adrynroy]

I do believe that Mr Braben himself owns the copyright.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

forget legal ownership for the moment and consider we are talking about a game that is now 30 years old - Elite belongs to those that still play it, end of

 

[DobrijZmej]

Copyright ownership - this is an extremely important issue.
I think, for anybody not a secret patent war. I hope, with the ED does not happen anything like that.

 

[JeffRyan]

forget legal ownership for the moment and consider we are talking about a game that is now 30 years old - Elite belongs to those that still play it, end of

Doesn't work like that mate, The Beatles Catalogue now belongs to those who still listen to it, The Lord of the Rings belongs to those who still read it... 30 years is a long time in computer development true, but it's still not really a long time.

I'm completely stunned and awed at how touchy people found this question. Who owns Elite? I expected a simple 'Braben and Bell' or 'Acornsoft' or a more indepth 'Well it was owned by Acornsoft, but then it reverted to Braben and Bell' or whatever instead... people started getting touchy about it.

 

[psykokow]

yes it is not a contentious issue at all, either Braben, Frontier or someone else owns the copyright..

Then its either licensed to whoever is making the game with terms and conditions thereof..

 

[JeffRyan]

Ho hum, nothing to see here.

 

[psykokow]

Oh.... well ignore me then lol..

I don't want to open Pandora's box, and I see no reason to beleive..

actually im going to delete my post then...

 

[synchromesh]

On another note....David Braben did keep the copyright to the film...which back then would have seemed ludicrous....They priobably thought he was nuts

Not so funny now and pretty realistic that a film could be made

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

On another note....David Braben did keep the copyright to the film...which back then would have seemed ludicrous....They priobably thought he was nuts

Not so funny now and pretty realistic that a film could be made

whadda ya mean 'could'? isn't Lave Revolution getting it's own movie?

 

[SAB380]

The fact Elite: Dangerous is using the old logo and name should be a big clue as to who owns copyright to the original ....right?

I don't think the logo and name will be seperate to the game.

 

[Juniper]

I seem to remember something about BT owning the copyright to the original Elite - under the name of Firebird.

But it's all conjecture really.

 

[VincentTH]

If I remember it correctly, in the settlement of the fallout, Ian Bell agreed to release share ownership of the original Elite, provided DB also relinquish the right to it. So Elite, the original game is now in public domain. I could be wrong though, memory is failing etc....

FE2, FFE and all subsequent Frontier games are owned by DB of course.

 

[drew]

forget legal ownership for the moment and consider we are talking about a game that is now 30 years old - Elite belongs to those that still play it, end of

That might be desirable, but it's not correct in law.

Ian and David jointly owned the original game and rights were given to many others in order to port Elite to the other 8 bit platforms of the day.

I believe that Ian Bell assisted with some of Frontier Elite 2, but ultimately gave permission for Elite material to be used in FE2. The rest is less clear.

For a while Elite, Frontier and First Encounters were made available as shareware from a url www.eliteclub.co.uk, but that no longer exists. This suggests that David Braben made arrangements for the copyright to ultimately reside with Frontier Developments.

I imagine this is now the case (I've seen nothing contrary). Ian Bell is almost certainly aware of Elite: Dangerous and would be within his rights to demand some kind of compensation or royalty for Elite materials should he still own rights.

Whether he does, or whether those rights now lie exclusively with Frontier is their business, not ours.

Cheers,

Drew.