Ultima designer Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British) has a plan to claim back the rights to his legendary RPG series from current owner EA. The trick to doing so? A rather obscure bit of copyright law from around 50 years ago.
EA acquired the Ultima rights, alongside its developer Origin Systems, back in 1992, and the publisher eventually closed the studio in 2004. Since then, Garriott hasn’t been shy about his intentions to win back Ultima. He’s often said as much on X and recently told Inside Games, “Every decade or so, I tried to work with EA on a revival of Ultima. They always seemed interested enough to start talking, then abandon talks just as quickly.”
Garriott’s statement comes after the discovery of new trademarks filed by EA for the Ultima franchise. These trademarks are notably somewhat different from typical renewal of ownership, with one filed as a Class 041 (video game) and the other as a Class 009 (downloadable video game) trademark.
This could suggest the EA is planning one of two things. It’s either looking to do something with the Ultima IP, which hasn’t had a new entry since 2013’s short-lived free-to-play mobile effort Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. Or, it’s potentially shoring up its defences against another party aiming to use this IP. Enter Richard Garriott.
It seems Garriott has a plan up his sleeve. As he explained to Inside Games, he intends to claim the series’ copyright back from EA using Section 203 of the Copyright Act of 1976. This states that after 35 years, the original author (creator) of a work can reclaim their copyright. This is a right granted to all creators in the USA, meaning all Garriott would have to do is provide a signed written statement to the copyright office, and the Ultima copyright would be his. Next year, Garriott would be well within his rights in getting the copyright back.
It’s worth noting there’s a significant difference between copyright and trademark. As Inside Games points out, copyright covers the source code of a game as well as its general look and feel, whereas the trademark protects the brand identity of a game. So, if Garriott does take back the copyright, he won’t be able to make a new ‘Ultima’ game, but he would be able to make a game very similar to Ultima.
Garriott says “‘Lord British’s Ultima’ will regain all the copyrights of my original work. What it will become, is the next challenge.”
