Mar. 27--Some original founders of Hard Rock Park said Thursday they still have intellectual property rights over the park's overall concept and want an annual $500,000 licensing fee and royalties from the park's new owners, who bought the park out of bankruptcy last month, according to court documents.

FPI MB Entertainment, the group that purchased the park for $25 million, said the compensation request not only threatens the reopening of the park, planned to be by Memorial Day, but the attraction's entire existence.

At issue is whether the rights to the layout, design and theme of some of the park's attractions and the park itself were transferred with the park's assets to the new owners by the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware.

Ultimately, that will be up to a judge to decide. A hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. today.

"It certainly is possible to separate intellectual property from the physical assets . . . that were sold," said Richard Stolker, a bankruptcy lawyer at Uptown Law in Rockville, Md. "Now whether that was done or not, you'd have to look at the documents that were filed."

The new owners say the sale of the park was approved by the bankruptcy court "free and clear of all encumbrances," indicating the intellectual property rights were transferred to them. They say the founders also have no more rights over the park because they failed to object to the original sale order.

The founders say the park's intellectual property did not belong to HRP Myrtle Beach Operations, one of the corporations that filed for bankruptcy, and thus could not have been transferred. Instead, they say the rights belong to HRP Creative Services Co., a separate corporation set up by the founders and one that never filed for bankruptcy.

HRP Creative Services was incorporated in Florida. According to the Web site of that state's Division of Corporations, the park's founders _ Jon Binkowski, Felix Mussenden and Steven Goodwin _ are partners in the corporation. Goodwin served as CEO of the park.

In an e-mail to the park's new owners that was included in the court documents, Goodwin asks for the licensing fee and for 1.5 percent of gross revenues over $50 million. Goodwin says that is a "fair offer" for such a "magnificent park."

"I find it inconceivable that you can consider opening the park in 2009 without securing an agreement with us to utilize our intellectual property, as the cost and time to strip out our creative content from the park would seem to rule out such a course of action," Goodwin wrote on March 1 to FPI MBE.