Abandonware - Legal Perspective

[charlielangridge]

I have a copy of Dancer DNA and I have been asked by an individual to give them a copy. The company that produced the soft are now nonexistant, and right before they went bust i phoned them to pay for a serial for the newest version and they gave it to me free and said they were giving them away as the company was going bust. I dont have that on paper, so what is the legal view on distribution of the soft?

[spark]

the legal position is 'they ain't gonna sue ya'. test-case by proxy... =]

toby

[vjking]

In a case of bankruptcy, in theory, there will be someone who assumes copyright ownership of the intellectual property - likely the senior debt holder. Although, if it is a bank, they aren't likely to keep the "asset", preferring to sell it if they can. Then, the purchasing party would own the copyright. They could sue you.

But is it "likely"? No.

[PilotX]

Not really a legal position but I would guess that even if the copyright holder did decide to sue the most they would get would be the price of the product becuase of the games abandware that has been going for years without computer games companies getting het up. If you wanted to be really secure then try to track down who was given copyright at the end of the bankruptcy. If you make a decent effort to do this then the courts in the UK will not come down hard on you.
If you want to follow this I would suggest writing to companies house to find out how you go about it.

[charlielangridge]

Cheers all for the info. Im gonna try and track down the owner of the copyright and sort something out, because this is after-all a fantastic program.

Charlie Langridge

As a subnote, could i please ask people not to email me begging for the software, as it was never my intention to mass distribute it. If i do find the copyright owner, I will endevour to get a copy available to people for a small price (or hopefully free!)