in the very first post, it appears Rick got FB to take down images which he has no rights to (Capcom, DE, etc...). This itself sounds to be as illegal as making stuff without permission...

We dont really even know if rick holds any rights at all, wms or others.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again when Rick's involved with ANYTHING....all I see is:

Lmao!
Mine, mine, mine. Haha.

I thought PPS had the rights to Capcom stuff now? Which one of those images was a Capcom game

I read every post on this thread but a question that I would like answered is who owns the rights to Data East stuff (e.g. Checkpoint, TMNT, etc.)?

Pretty Sure Stern Pinball... The Non Licensed stuff anyhow

Lol.

Hope you got permission from Pixar to use that clip.

I've seen documents. Rick definitely holds the Bally/Williams rights. No idea on the others.

CPR would know as they did some plastic sets for DE games and older Sterns.
Don't expect Stern to be readily remaking parts for anything older than the last 5 years, including their own games starting in 2001.
As someone so politely said, "not enough monetary interest."
The only people that do are private collectors.

Anyone want to take a guess how many years ago people asking for decals to Stern to replace the silk screened artwork on TSPP cabinets?
A game that made its final production run in 2008 less than 10 years ago?
Who ended up finally doing something about the problem?
Was it Stern?
History shares the answer on this one.

Doesn't Stern own Data East game rights?

I have no problem with copyright itself. I think people should be paid for their work and be able to protect it and profit from it. I have a problem with the ridiculous status of our current copyright law and how it has been extended to protect Mickey Mouse. Yes, you should be able to profit from your work. But your grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren? I don't think that was the original intent of copyright.

I also have a problem with how our government uses its power to bully other countries with more reasonable copyright laws into changing theirs to become as ridiculous as ours.

As you mentioned, even if Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, there would still be restrictions on his use due to him being trademarked. That's fine and totally understandable.

I hope you are right and when we get closer to 2023 we won't see things further pushed back into perpetuity.

Going to take a wild guess and say he might have Capcom rights but he doesn't want it public knowledge as would lead to BBBR and KingpinR speculation.

Wild guess though!

This would be unworkable. Companies change their name, reorganize, merge, acquire, etc. all the time in ways that make it impossible to gauge whether the company remains "the same" as the one that "created" the copyrighted work. A simpler, fairer concept is to go back to the original rule - 14 years plus a 14 year renewal if you apply. 28 years is plenty of time to capture the benefits of your work -- not sure why it's unfair for Paramount to stop receiving ST:TNG checks at this point, it's not like they calculated profits at years 28+ into their plans when they greenlit the show.

No, Metallica should have to pay the poor sucker who bought it.

That album sucks.

60719920 (resized).jpg

Yup, Metallica paked it in after Master of Puppets !!

Packed

How far back in time ?
When Williams and Bally merged, did Williams get the rights to Bally's back catalogue or just every thing from date of purchase going forwards ?

So do PPS own the rights to EVERYTHING Bally and EVERYTHING Williams ?

eh, i like And Justice For All, but i think we agree nothing productive came from them beyond that point.

You will never get a straight, non evasive answer.

Just like the Capcom question has been asked 1000 times without a straight answer.

I was going to try to make a compelling arguement for The Black Album but then I realized I can't.

FWIW, PPS was making Big Bang Bar plastics two years ago:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/big-bang-bar-plastic-sets-any-interest-set-andor-uncut-sheet

Of course the BBB rights could be separated from the rest of the Capcom pinball IP, or something else might have been going on there.

That's true.

Even on the new album, the opening track "Hardwired" comes in with a hard gallop, but it does not take long until the lack of any variation makes you wonder if someone just played a single bar loop on a drum machine.

Well it's about bloody time they were brought to task about exactly what they own the rights to. They may well be insinuating that they own the rights to stuff that they don't and in doing so preventing people getting much needed parts for games.

The whole parts business has been far too cloak and dagger ever since Williams shut up their pinball shop.

Its funny, i felt the same thing when i first heard it.

I did not read the fine print.

Sadly the fine print seems to be the crux of the matter.

That does not mean that they own the rights outright.

They may have had to pay Capcom, or it would be really funny if there was just a bunch of uncut sheets leftover when they raided Gene's warehouse....

... Why wouldn't he want that kind of PR/speculation? Doesn't seem the type to shy away from that kind of stuff.

An observation made multiple times but I'll make it again...

People seem more obsessed with Rick proving what he has IP rights to than they are interested in seeing what the OP (who may or may not be selling stuff) has rights to.

It seems to me many would overlook one (possible) wrong to instead focus on someone they have an agenda with.

I don't know Rick nor have I ever dealt with him or talked to him... but I wonder if people are more interested in hanging him or making him look bad versus truly caring whether he holds certain rights.

At the end of the day - it is the person SELLING something to me or others who must prove he or she isn't violating someone else's rights. (Which again may or may not be happening since the OP is a little evasive about his business practices and what he sells or doesn't sell...)

Neither party is coming off as someone I want to do business with after this post. That much I can say for certain. I can say one more thing for certain - never let logic or the law get in the way of a good Internet forum pissing match.

Williams bought the entire Bally pinball division, including all inventory, drawings, patents and copyrights.

PPS has a *license* to use the Williams and Bally trademarks and copyrighted materials. Scientific Games still owns the rights. So technically, someone else could get a license as well and pretty much destroy PPS's business.

Yrs this can happen if Williams, sci games, pulls the licence and kills the contract. Rick protecting the rights is why Williams won't do that. As long as Rick has the rights, no one else does.

Abandonment of IP?

"A mark shall be deemed to be “abandoned”. . . when its use has been discontinued with intent not to resume such use. Intent not to resume may be inferred from circumstances. Nonuse for three consecutive years shall be prima facie evidence of abandonment. “Use” of a mark means the bona fide use of such mark made in the ordinary course of trade, and not made merely to reserve a right in a mark.

This means that if a marketer stops using a trademark for three years and has not done anything substantial within that time to reintroduce the trademark into commerce, the trademark becomes abandoned.

After abandonment, all previous “goodwill” and name association that may have existed are gone, and the trademark is available for a new company or entrepreneur to create new goodwill. Its former owner has no legitimate grounds for stopping a new user from adopting its old brand name by asserting that it has residual goodwill."

Maybe not, maybe if someone else made the case to Williams that they could be getting 10% of everything sold if they'd license to someone else who actually agreed to allow stuff to get manufactured. i'd love it to hear an announcement that another person or company had also been granted a license.

Many licences are "non exclusive" - meaning that, whilst a certain person or company is granted a licence (or limited licence for a specific set of materials) it doesn't prevent the IP owner from licencing additional people or companies for all or part of the same IP.

This, of course, all comes down to the individual agreement.

In the case of various IP that Homepin is licenced to use, and in 'every' case, the contracts Homepin holds are ALL "non-exclusive".

This leaves most of the "power" in the hands of the IP owner. In the case of Williams/Bally we know from the past that there were at least two companies licenced by WMS for Williams/Bally IP at the same time - Mr Pinball in Australia and Gene. There is no way anyone speculating here could know if there are other people out there licenced for some or all of the Williams/Bally stuff today in addition to whatever agreements PPS may have with WMS.

It also is not anyone's business here (even though some would like to think it is) exactly who has licences and for what. This information is commercial in confidence and would only be presented to companies/persons infringing or potentially iinfringing by the IP owner or licensee.

It's all a big mess and I can say for certain the whole IP nonsense has held up Homepin pinball progress for at least a year while we waited for a few patents to expire before we could proceed. There can be no doubt the entire IP business needs a huge shakeup.

I think you're referring to Trademark (logos & names for example) which has a non use limitation. This case seems to be more about copyright (artistic assets for example) which has a much longer expiry.

I'm wondering what kind of commercialization clause the licensee has regarding the IP assets, if any.

Seems Licensor would be foolish to grant an exclusive license to somebody who isn't going to commercialize the totality of the IP.

At least a mechanism to allow products to be made if Licensee chooses not to produce certain products for whatever reason.

A classic example: Rockwell Power Tools.

I have no problem with a company benefiting from their work for a period of time. 14 years + a 14 year renewal was plenty of time. Plenty of time for them to make their millions 120 years is a ludicrous amount of time. Many works are the result of older works being re-purposed. With a 120 year time frame this will stunt future generations creative work.

If you can accept that the band evolved its sound and recorded a Hard Rock album rather than a Thrash Metal album, it becomes much easier to appreciate it for what it is.

I mean how could they really have ever surpassed "Lightning" and "Puppets"? ("Justice" seems to have been the turning point - some Thrash riffs remain, but the more progressive/experimental elements represent the band working toward redefining its sound.). I don't think they would have survived had they not changed. Also, credit must be given to the black album for being the Metal gateway drug for a LOT of women!

(Damn, that was long-winded and had nothing to do with pinball, guess I shouldn't drink and post!)

The Black album is awesome. I don't care what anyone else says.

IDK; but I'm guessing no.
Data East became Sega... and the Stern bought the rights to continue making the sega machines.
But there is no guarantee that Stern got the rights to earlier DE titles in that transaction.
Really doesn't matter anyway... almost ALL of DataEast's titles from 1991 were licensed properties. As a result; they would have to go back and reup the license with the current holders. I count 28 titles from 1991... of which 4 are non-licensed themes:
Checkpoint, Secret Service, Torpedo Alley, and Time Machine.

Agreed. As a teenager in the 90's I loved that album (as well as the ones that came before it).

Held you up???

Why use someone else design anyway, or you could have licensed the patents from PPS, I know many who have permission to remake patent items, it didn't stop stern, nobody starts a company and waits a year for a patent to expire, doesn't make commercial sense

That will never happen, PPS license is exclusive and perpetual, regardless if they make or don't make a thing, wms don't get a cent more either way.

No they cant, I made sure when I got the license from Williams it was exclusive

Everything

There were two mechs that we wanted to use and knew that the patents were expiring in less than a year. We spent some time looking at new ways of doing things but in the end just decided to wait. With 11 months to run on the patents it wasn't worth the efforts to get any licences. We figured that, by the time our product would be on the market the patents in question would have expired.

During that time I had plenty of other things to keep me busy so we just shelved work on those areas at that time.

Taking the topic back to the original point of this thread, but presumably that PPS license is not only perpetual and exclusive, but the defined territory is deemed as in force worldwide as well.

Right and Homepin aren't you supposed to be focused on making a thunder something machine? It's been what 3 years? You don't want me being negative in your "I'm making a pinball machine" thread. Your wordy on pinside for someone making a pinball machine.

Anyways Rick at Planetary can suck it for the grief he's causing the op. My advice is keep making stuff for pinball enthusiasts, people like Rick wasting their time going after people that actually make stuff happen should take note. Go away!

Homepin drain this thread because it's wasting your time.