On: DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster

[zajio1am]

> That’s insane. If this were to hold up then any royalty obligation could be shuffled off to a shell entity?!

Why would this be surprising? If that was hired work (instead of licence for IP) for company A, then IP owner is company A and obligations to author are just contractural payments unrelated to IP ownership. Company A then may sell IP ownership to company B, while keeping contractual obligations to pay for contracted work to author.

It seems not much different to a case when you buy a house from a developer, while the developer is still owing money to contract workers / builders.

[webmaven → zajio1am]

> Company A then may sell IP ownership to company B, while keeping contractual obligations to pay for contracted work to author.

As has been noted elsewhere in this discussion, Disney didn't just buy LucasFilm's assets, they bought LucasFilm, in a straightforward stock swap.

That simply doesn't provide the opportunity you're describing. LucasFilm wasn't left behind as an obligation riddled shell.

I'm pretty sure that if Disney could point to some legal entity other than themselves that was left saddled with the obligations, they would do so.

Perhaps they just haven't done so yet, so we'll see.