Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Who would have thought that Slashdot would cover a story about a giant company trademarking something. I'm sure their posters will be busy all night coming up with clever new comments about this topic.
Ummm... well, actually...
Seriously, I agree with your points, Crusader as an IP doesn't exist. It's in an even worse situation that WC - for several years after its release, until Dosbox became popular, it was just too much of a pain to get it running.
...But, what Crusader had (and I am fully aware that this is not in the least bit noteworthy to the general public, and for that reason, neither to the people making these decisions), is a really, really deep storyline. It was fantastic in that regard, just like every other Origin game of the time. This wasn't, strcitly speaking, something built into the game. In the mid-1990s, Origin could have made Space Invaders, and their writing department would throw in a manual that would make everyone think this Space Invaders had more depth than every other game in the universe (other Origin titles excepted). That's how it was with Crusader - it was a game about blowing stuff up, advertised as having nine different ways to kill people, but the people who wrote the manual turned it into a really great piece of (political) science fiction.
The problem with Ultima is that the IP is inexorably linked to its figurehead, who is a crazy person. It's sort of an odd rock and a hard place situation - no one wants to see an Ultima X that *isn't* from Richard Garriott... and no one wants to play whatever Richard Garriott thinks is a good idea for Ultima X.