[rpdillon]

This is a deeply flawed argument. The idea that folks focused on preservation are creating a legal hazard is false. Copyright law does not care whether the "IP is active". What GOG is doing here is an unmitigated good. To be clear, there is no "commercially abandoned" element to copyright, even if there should be.

[dmoy]

In fact there's no commercial requirement at all for copyright, abandoned or otherwise.

You can make a thing, copyright it, and also never sell, see for example open source software. You can even copyright something that nobody's seen before.

Copyright, patent, and trademark all have substantial differences.