But the vexatious claim is important because if the judges entertain every single fraudulent lawsuit by newly-registered predatory firms, the courts will be swamped with everyone registering new firms as sub-licensees and suing every other sub-licensee.
Sure it is, but the evidence looked at is 'do you have a valid copyright and does this claim of infringement have at least some merit?' Merit, in this case, means 'assuming everything the plaintiff says is correct, is that a violation?" It's a ridiculously simple bar to proceed.
As to 'is the claim vexatious?' that's only considered AFTER the initial look at the merits is done.
And, to top it off, the judge only looks at the merits prior to the case if the defense files a motion to dismiss.
(a) Hence, in this particular case it is crucial to review the date of the registration of "Bell Elite Rights LLP" (8th February 2017), which means this entity was NOT in existence when the Kickstarter by Spidermind Games was launched, so the "Elite Dangerous" Kickstarter could NOT infringe upon the Intellectual Property Rights of an entity that did NOT exist at the time David Braben created "Elite: Dangerous", did not exist when Frontier Develoments granted Spidermind Games the license to "Elite: Dangerous" (not the 1984 Elite) and did not exist when Spidermind Games launched. What we see is a victim being created by "Bell Elite Rights LLP" after the alleged IP crime.
Utterly irrelevant. Not only does it not matter when they incorporated -- you can transfer ownership of IP and that doesn't prevent suing for prior infringement -- it's not even interested to the copyright claim.
(b) Furthermore, Bell Elite Rights LLP is a corporate entity separate from Ian Bell, thus once again, the original Intellectual Property rights that belonged to Ian Bell do not automatically belong to this entity. They only belong to this entity from the date they may have received a signed legal document from Ian Bell to sign away his rights to them and he must have specifically signed a contract for them to represent Ian Bell (I am yet to see this, so it is possible Ian Bell signed this contract).
Again, irrelevant. If the entity owns the rights, they can sue for ongoing infringement. They can even sue for prior infringement. When you get the rights doesn't remove your ability to sue, that's not how copyright law works.
(c) Following up on (b) since the original 1984 "Elite" IP belonged to both Ian Bell and David Braben but only David Braben is involved in the creation of the new Intellectual Property of "Elite: Dangerous" Ian Bell does not hold any Intellectual Property rights to "Elite: Dangerous" and only owns rights to those parts of "Elite: Dangerous" that inherited the original co-created 1984 "Elite" IP.
Perhaps, I doubt the provenance of your facts, given your failed understanding of how this generally works. But, if true, that doesn't remove claim to those elements. If anything carried over, even in derivative form, copyright can apply.
(d) Spidermind Games licensed "Elite: Dangerous" the sole Intellectual Property of David Braben and Frontier Developments produced in 2012 as a separate Intellectual Property to the 1984 "Elite" co-created by Ian Bell and David Braben. Therefore, Spidermind Games cannot be infringing on the rights of Ian Bell since they received the "Elite: Dangerous" license and not Ian Bell's original 1984 Elite game license. So if "Elite: Dangerous" is NOT infringing upon the rights of Ian Bell, then a game licensed upon "Elite: Dangerous" (and NOT Ian Bell's co-created 1984 Elite) cannot infringe upon those rights either.
Nope. If I write a book, and someone else writes a sequel to that book, and then someone else writes a sequel to that book, I can sue under my rights to the original. I don't have to sue the person who wrote the 1st sequel, that doesn't reduce my rights. Perhaps I didn't find what the 1st sequel did with my characters to be bothersome, but I don't like what the second sequel does. That's good enough.
Again, it's becoming painful how wrong you are about how copyright law works. None of the things you say have to be answered first are even relevant to the claim. They may become relevant to a subsequent determination on if the claim is vexatious, but, honestly, given one of the people involved in the claim actually does hold some rights related to the IP, it's highly unlikely it will be determined to be vexatious. It may not succeed, given copyright law I'm not wiling to go over 50/50 on that proposition, but it's very unlikely to be determined vexatious given the information you've provided. But who knows, going to trial is unpredictable.
