A buggy question bothers the Gothic community since Piranha Bytes and JoWood parted ways: wich of these 2 companies has the rights over the Gothic franchise ?

Piranha Bytes, trough their art director Michael Rüve, brought forth a document that says the rights over the serie belongs to JoWood and that they have no rights to work on a Gothic game anymore. Also the brand "Gothic" is owned by JoWood, so Piranha Bytes have to think of another name for their new project.

As a response to Piranha's declaration regarding the rights, JoWood offered more detailed informations about this:

* JoWooD currently holds the exclusive usage rights for the "Gothic" brand. (1)
* After the failure of the negotiations with Pluto 13 only JoWooD is allowed to produce the game Gothic 4 with another development studio and publish it worldwide.
* Pluto 13 is not authorized to develop and release a Gothic game at the present time.
* JoWooD owns the exclusive worldwide publishing right for conversions of Gothic 3 or Gothic 4 to other platforms.
* JoWooD owns the exclusive worldwide publishing rights for Gothic 4 add-ons [plural; ed.]. Pluto 13 "will receive the first option" (*) to develop the add-on [singular; ed.] for JoWooD.
* "With regard to a possible Gothic 5 Pluto 13 potentially has certain rights." (**) "But at any rate JoWooD has at least a first option right (*) and a last option right (**) to publish this game worldwide , too." (2)

Furthermore JoWooD refused to comment on the Gothic 3 add-on.

Links:

Piranha Bytes document

JoWood statement