As a follow up for the IP rights question, I know there are a lot of games/movies/shows who’s release or remake is in jeopardy due to either not being able to figure out who owns the rights or there being multiple parties that own part of the rights who do not agree. How do the rights owners go from “known” to “unknown” and how much piecemeal can rights be split up? (With the understanding you are not a legal professional. Still curious about the layman in the industry’s understanding).

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It can get pretty weird with how things get split up. Here's my current go-to example. Right now, Hasbro is currently promoting and accepting preorders for a Marvel Legends action figure for a character named Gargantos.

If you're familiar with the Capcom Marvel fighting game series, this character may look familiar to you... but you'd do a double take at the name. Here is a win screen taken from the Marvel Super Heroes (1995) arcade fighting game.

This character, however, isn't Gargantos - it's named Shuma-Gorath. So why is Hasbro releasing a toy based on a Capcom character design of a Marvel character that has clearly been renamed but nothing else is changed? Especially when the target audience almost certainly knows this character by the name Shuma-Gorath?

It's because today, neither Marvel, Hasbro, nor Capcom have the rights to the name Shuma-Gorath. Marvel absolutely owns the rights to the giant mystic eyeball squid character who has fought Dr. Strange many times, but they do not own the name. The name Shuma-Gorath was created by writer Robert E. Howard, also the creator of Kull the Conqueror and Conan the Barbarian. Marvel licensed Howard's IP and first used the name Shuma-Gorath for a space squid villain for Dr. Strange back in 1973. In 1994, Marvel was a lot looser with their licensing and Capcom was able to make use of this character for their Marvel fighting game. Since then, the ownership of Howard's catalogue (and the name Shuma-Gorath) was picked up by Paradox Entertainment (spun off from Paradox Interactive), which then became Cabinet Entertainment, which then became a company called Heroic Signatures that mostly manages IP, which was then bought by Funcom. Now Funcom owns the rights to the name Shuma-Gorath, which Hasbro was unwilling or unable to license, so the character's toy must be renamed Gargantos or Hasbro and everyone else involved might get sued for copyright infringement on the name.

In a bit of amusing trivia, the giant squid eyeball monster from Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness was also named Gargantos and not Shuma-Gorath for the exact same reason. So yeah, licensing IP can get really weird and also specific sometimes!

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