Is toaplan public domain?

[mehguy]

Is toaplan and toaplan's IP's public domain?

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Why would it be? Stuff doesn't become public domain when a company goes under. Someone still owns the rights.

[CloudyMusic]

It's extremely, extremely rare for commercial games to later be released into the public domain, so I'm going to go with no. The rights are most likely either still owned by one of Toapan's old creditors as a result of their bankruptcy, or were sold/transferred to another company via those original creditors at some point over the years.

I found a few mentions of people who have attempted to track down the Toaplan IP holders, mostly on articles talking about the shady stuff surrounding Ultracade, but I haven't seen anybody who's managed to figure out who currently owns it.

[jepjepjep]

According to wikipedia, copyright laws are 50-70 years in Japan. So maybe when we're too old to play shooting games Toaplan's stuff will enter the public domain.

[Pretas]

Doesn't Taito currently own the rights to much of their catalog?

Toaplan Shooting Battle was published by Banpresto, though.

[DJ Incompetent]

Yuheng Software CO.,LTD

[VRC-7]

toaplan.co.jp is owned by System Tokyo Inc., a company run by former Toaplan president Taizo Hayashi.

[jepjepjep]

It has the Toaplan logo.

[Doctor Butler]

toaplan.co.jp is owned by System Tokyo Inc., a company run by former Toaplan president Taizo Hayashi.

It has the Toaplan logo.

Case closed, then.

[Tarma]

toaplan.co.jp is owned by System Tokyo Inc., a company run by former Toaplan president Taizo Hayashi.

It has the Toaplan logo.

Case closed, then.

Yeah, I would say that's a pretty safe assumption that they own the rights to Toaplan's IP, although a few IP's may belong to Taito.