Licensing? Costs? Clarifications?

So I have been researching this for a little bit, since I can see the renewal for the Deckmaster system was not renewed in another post. However, I am left with some fairly large questions which I am hoping someone can clarify.

1.) What exactly needs to be secured regarding the licensing for the reprint of V:TES? From my searching it looks like the rules for the game in some manner are patented by WOTC and that the license for the game itself is in CCP's hands, but is there anything else that would be required.

2.) Has anyone thought about calculating the required costs for production and licensing and then Kickstarting the project? I've heard an estimate of $250000 from someone else, but that was 4 years ago.

3.) Mildly unrelated, but is the V:EKN a licensed NFP or is it not a business at all?

Anytime I've seen anything talking about actual numbers, there is a whole lot of "that's undisclosed."

DriveThruRPGRPG expanded into DriveThruCards and failed to secure a deal with the license holders.

Basically: The game is dead as far as the IP owners are concerned. If the VEKN print-yourself expansions are popular enough, the game will live. But not as we know it, Jim.

TheLich wrote:

1.) What exactly needs to be secured regarding the licensing for the reprint of V:TES? From my searching it looks like the rules for the game in some manner are patented by WOTC and that the license for the game itself is in CCP's hands, but is there anything else that would be required.

There are potentially many different sources of intellectual property in the game.

There is the patent, which has probably expired, but I can't quite remember the details.

There are trademarks. Quite a few bits of the game are hit by trademarks - the Deckmaster name, the V:TES name etc. These are held by different people - principally, Hasbro (from acquiring WotC) and CCP (from White Wolf).

There could be copyright claims on a bunch of things - the rulebook, card text, the nuts and bolts of card design (e.g. the symbol for 'political action'), card art etc. These would be held by a bunch of different people too e.g. White Wolf probably hold copyright on any cards or rules created on their watch. Card art could be complicated - was the image licensed for a particular use or a particular period of time? Who owns the copyright in the rulebook that has evolved over time - Hasbro and CCP? Are they derivative works (which are a whole extra world of legal pain)? Did WotC transfer any intellectual property to White Wolf, or was it just licensed?

TheLich wrote:

2.) Has anyone thought about calculating the required costs for production and licensing and then Kickstarting the project? I've heard an estimate of $250000 from someone else, but that was 4 years ago.

The issue doesn't appear to be money. Or, at least, if it was just money, you'd have expected someone to ask for a hat to be passed round long before now.

Steve Wieck , one of the founders of White Wolf, has approached CCP and Hasbro about reviving V:TES through OneBookshelf (DriveThruRPG, DriveThruCCG) and doing something with V:TES. As of 2014, those negotiations were reported as stalled .

Though the issues don't appear to be solely financial, it is worth bearing in mind that when either White Wolf or WotC produced V:TES, they only had to pay one license holder (WotC paying WW for the WoD stuff, and WW paying WotC for the card game stuff). Any future project would potentially have to pay both of them - and Vampire: the Masquerade is being revived , which potentially complicated things further - first, the IP is potentially more valuable again, and second, what (if anything) has been licensed regarding V:tM to Onyx , on what terms, and does that complicate licensing use of the WoD/V:tM etc. for V:TES?