Speculations: AB losing rights to Toei anime series?

[sangofe]

I call this a speculation because there doesn't seem to be any official word on this, however, it looks as it's accepted as a fact in French anime communities. In my search for sources, I asked outright on mataweb, one of, if not the most respected French anime forum.

I put the French reply first here, hoping that in case I made horrible misstranslations someone could fix those...

Halo. J'ai lus dans plusieurs posts par ce par la que AB vont perdre les droits pour la saga Dragonball en 2011, mais jamais vus de sources. Est ce que il y a une source officielle? Merci d'avance.

Disons que les contrats de licence ont forcément vocation à se terminer un jour. Ne jamais oublier que ce type de contrat s'apparente à une certaine forme de location et non d'un achat (acquisition), comme on peut le lire souvent à tort !!
Quant aux sources, tu te doutes bien déjà que l'arrivée à terme fait partie normalement des obligations confidentielles (secrètes) nées du contrat, auxquelles les parties demeurent tenues, sous peine de sanctions financières (clause pénale), avec certaines exceptions, donc on ne communiquera pas trop dessus publiquement, probablement, aussi bien du côté du licensor que du licencié.
De plus, il n'est, sans doute, pas dans la volonté de Tôei Anim de faire reconduire les droits de leurs productions auprès d'AB. A ce titre, il suffit de voir l'exemple de rétrocessions des marques initialement déposées par le Groupe AB, y compris pour les dépôts de marques communautaires.
Quant à la propriété tant matérielle (celle attachée au support sur lequel se trouve l'oeuvre. ex : bande 16mm ou autres), qu'incorporelle (celle liée à la propriété intellectuelle), des VF réalisées par le distributeur, elle revient au producteur de l'oeuvre, qui le prévoit initialement contractuellement, sauf à faire preuve de négligence.

Here's my question, and the reply I got translated (the translation may be a bit wrong, because it was insanely hard for me to translate)

Hey, I have read in several posts that AB will lose rights for the Dragonball saga in 2010, but never found any sources. Is there an official source for this? Thank in advance.

Let's say that a licence contract is boud to end one day. One should never forget this type of contract is the same as some kind of leasing, and not buying (acquisition), as it's often wrongly read/understood.

When it comes to sources, you surely already know that the termination of the contract is normally part of confidential (secret) obligations coming from the its contents that both parts are bound to follow to not get financial penalties (penalty clause), apart from certain expections. So that's probably why it's not talked too much about publically neither from the licensor or the licensee.

Furthermore, it's without doubt not Toei Animation's wish to renew the rights for their products in regards to AB. As such, it's enough to see the examples of retrocession trademarks initially filed by the AB groupe, including the deposits for the trade marks.

When it comes to the property, both materialistcal (the part attached to the standard/support where the artwork is, e.g; 16 mm tapes), and abstractical aspects, (non material) like the French version produced by the distributor, it goes back to the one owning it the title/art/trademark, who originally previews that by making a contract, (expect in the case of negligience).