Quote:
Originally Posted by Malenfant
...to SJG. Not to FFE. Surely authors should have a say in what happens to their work if ownership gets transferred to another company?
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No, "by all rights" the author transferred the copyright in the work to the purchasers. It is a common legal term. It not an issue in general because there are other terms available that limit the rights sold in various ways.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malenfant
If not, then under what situation would rights revert back to the Author?
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None with all rights sold.
However you need to look at the EXACT terms you agreed too in your correspondence with SJ GAMES and then talk to a IP Attorney for clarification. I realize that may sound like a big deal but that the only way for you to understand fully what you agreed too and conversely any remedy you may have.
While I haven't had anything published with SJ Games, I have looked at their submission process and in general if you write something for them they want all the rights. The exception being licensed property. In this case Traveller.
So what happened here is that you wrote an article, submitted it to JTAS, accepted the terms on condition of acceptance, it was accepted, SJ Games compensated you.
Then SJ Games in turn publishes it under their license with FFE, which apparently stipulates that all right to GURPS Traveller products revert to Marc Miller and FFE. However that is consistent with how Marc Miller been dealing with Traveller Licenses in the past due to the Digest Group fiasco.
The lesson is to understand completely what you sign or agree too in publishing. If you don't then goto the IP Attorney. It what I did a couple of year back and it was worth every penny. I haven't since because I haven't had to sign anything appreciatively different from what I originally went into for. But if something new came up then I would pay the money to make sure I am not missing anything.
From publishing myself, my opinion is that it is not a good idea to publish anything with with a publisher and surrender your rights. Unless you are playing with other people's stuff as I call it.
For example I created an original setting that I call the Majestic Stars that I ran campaigns for using the Traveller rules. I would not submit anything from that to a publisher unless I retain all my right to use it again in the future.
However I also have some stuff I created that only works in the Third Imperium setting, I don't care if I surrendered all right to that materials. The Third Imperium wasn't mine to begin with.
A real life example is that I don't have any rights to the Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor product for Goodman Games. I was hired to covert and update the original 70s version to D&D 3.5. Later I did another project with Goodman Games where I wrote a series of original settings under the Points of Light series. There I opted to retain my rights to the text I wrote and maps I drew. I don't have any rights to the title of the series, Points of Light, or to the art. So I could publish the text myself but it will be with new art, and a new layout.
Hope this helps, I realize it sucks to realize this after the fact, but you are not longer the owner of those articles. Once you were compensated, SJ Games was free to do anything they wanted with those articles. In this case was to publish them under their FFE License for Traveller.