In the " Intellectual Property Strategic Plan 2021," announced by the Japanese government on July 13, 2022, in the section entitled "Content Strategies for the Digital Age," the plan outlines "the realization of a system that will enable simple and centralized rights handling of a vast and diverse range of works, including past content, UGC, works with unknown rights holders, and other works not centrally managed by copyright management companies. The report outlines that "a system that enables simple and centralized rights handling of a vast and diverse range of copyrighted works, including past content, UGC, works whose right holders are unknown, and other works that are not centrally managed by copyright management companies will be realized.
Legal reprinting and distribution of retro games?
According to the report, the government will also support the promotion and translation of content overseas, and develop a system for the healthy development of e-sports and the establishment of a position acceptance system.
Another major topic is the possibility of legal reprinting and distribution of retro games by paying a certain amount of money to a "centralized management organization" to be established in the future, which will be able to handle the rights to content created in the past even if the current rights holders are unknown. This is suggested to allow legal reprinting and distribution of retro games.
There are a number of retro games that have not been reprinted to date because the current rights holders are unknown. It is hoped that this new system will bring back into the public eye some of the masterpieces of the past that have been kept out of the public eye.
It will be interesting to see what kind of hope the " Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2021 " will bring to the game industry in the future.
For more information, please visit the Intellectual Property Strategic Secretariat of the Cabinet Office's Intellectual Property Strategic Promotion Bureau's website, where the " Intellectual Property Strategic Promotion Plan 2021 " is available in PDF format.