It's less that Acti and Fox couldn't be bothered to look but more they didn't know where to start as NOLF predated their use of digital storage. The trademark and copyright documents are stashed away in long-forgotten boxes in long-forgotten places. What threw a spanner into the works, though, was WB realising that it has a loose claim to the later two NOLF games (A Spy in HARM's Way and spin-off Contract JACK) in the form of the trademarks for thosegoing with Monolith to WB as part of the acquisition. That's what lead WB to part ways with Night Dive and issue a threat of legal action should ND continue to pursue the re-releases, which you can read about on Kotaku My research into the matter leads me to believe that the IP is indeed split three ways: Fox owns the games themselves (as per Copyright.gov); Activision, by way of the merger with Vivendi Games back in 2007, owns the NOLF trademark (as per this assignment document detailing the transfer of ownership from Fox); and, as mentioned above, WB owns the trademarks to the subtitles of the later two entries in the series (as per this assignment document detailing the transfer of ownership from Monolith). It's possible that Fox sold the games themselves in addition to the trademark, but there's no record of this on Copyright.gov, plus the sale occurred in 2007, so if Foxsell the games, it'd surely have its own physical and digital records -- and surely someone involved with the communication link to Night Dive would have been aware of the games being let go.