Robot Wars: Transformers vs. Robotech vs. BattleTech

The mecha-robot craze reached its peak in the 80s, but the controversy over who owns the Japanese-imported robot designs continues to rage on as nostalgia-fueled games hash out the rights. A recent lawsuit filed by Harmony Gold against FASA's founder is proof the battle isn't over.


[h=3]FASA vs. Harmony Gold: Round One[/h]It all started with game company FASA and their miniature game, BattleTech. Robotech_Master's Livejournal, which draws from Lexis/Nexis sources, picks up the thread:

When BattleTech was first made, in 1985, FASA licensed the images used for its original 26 mechs from a model company called Twentieth Century Imports ("TCI"), which claimed in turn to have acquired them from a Japanese animation (anime) studio in Japan called Tatsunoko. Those images were of mecha, or machinery, featured in various anime that Tatsunoko had made—and for which TCI had at least acquired the rights to make models. TCI's provenance over the mechas' likenesses was, and still is (for reasons explained later), uncertain.

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The controversial images in question were the Wasp, Stinger, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer, Rifleman, and Crusader. Their origin, as it turns out, was from another series known as Superdimensional Fortress Macross, or Robotech as its known in the United States. The rights are complicated to say the least, as they involve both U.S. and Japanese law. Kotaku explains:

...Studio Nue, Big West, and Tatsunoko filed a series of copyright lawsuits in Japan to reiterate which company owned what in the early 2000s. The result reaffirmed that everything was exactly as it had always been: Studio Nue and Big West co-own the characters, story, etc., and resulting franchise, while Tatsunoko owns the original footage and international licensing rights for the anime and merchandise of The Super Dimension Fortress Macross but not the rest of the franchise—which they had no involvement in making. Thus in turn, Harmony Gold owns the international licensing rights for the anime and merchandise of the original The Super Dimension Fortress Macross which it purchased from Tatsunoko—but nothing from the franchise after that.
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Harmony Gold doesn't consider any rights in Japan to affects its worldwide claim to the mech designs:

The litigation in Japan involving Tatsunoko, Big West and Studio Nue does not affect Harmony Gold or its licensees. Harmony Gold is not a party to any legal proceedings. Furthermore, the lawsuit, which was tried in front of a Japanese court, only relates to rights in Japan. Since Harmony Gold's worldwide rights to Macross exclude Japan, a Japanese judgment does not apply to us.
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It was for this reason that Harmony Gold sent a cease-and-desist letter to FASA. However, despite the cease and desist letter, no lawsuits were filed, so the status quo continued for about a decade.
[h=3]FASA vs. Harmony Gold: Round Two[/h]Things changed in the intervening years. BattleTech became increasingly popular, turning into a multimedia franchise of its own. Robotech was becoming its own franchise juggernaut for Harmony Gold. And of course when you have a franchise, the obligatory toys come with it. Fans of the Transformers cartoon might be surprised to see a Transformer named Jetfire who looks a lot like a Valkyrie from Robotech. There's a reason why:

Jetfire only saw a few American production runs, as the show the original toy was based upon, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, was exported to America to become the first third of Robotech. Ironically, since Hasbro released Jetfire first, there was never a U.S. release of an authentic transforming version of the toy for Robotech, even though the design was the series' most recognizable and popular mecha. As with other pre-Robotech borrowings from Macross (for instance, Battletech), the licensing situation for the toy became murky with two different companies (Big West and Tatsunoko Production) asserting exclusive rights to license Macross merchandise outside Japan. Due to these legal issues, Jetfire has not been among the Transformers toys reissued in the 21st century.
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Toys are also the reason that FASA and Harmony Gold butted heads...again. The issue of who owned the rights cropped up when FASA started pitching a BattleTech toy line to toy company Playmates. FASA pitched a BattleTech series to Playmates, who declined -- but never returned all of the BattleTech promotional materials. BattleTech toys were eventually produced by Tycho, but that didn't stop Playmates from creating their own Exosquad Heavy Attack E-frame -- which looked a lot like a BattleTech Madcat. FASA filed suit, as Chris Meadows explains:

As FASA asserted in its filing, the Exosquad storyline shares a remarkable number of similarities with BattleTech: most notably, the use of neurally-controlled giant robots by humans to fight an invasion by genetically-modified humans using similar robots. It even used the name “Draconis”—one of the BattleTech houses—for a character. FASA also pointed out that one of the Exosquad “e-frame” mecha strongly resembled a BattleTech Madcat, and the others resembled other BattleTech mechs. And, funny thing, Playmates had several months in which to look over the material FASA sent them as part of its own toy pitch—some of which they never actually returned.
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A third player reentered the controversy, as Harmony Gold had also approached Playmates to reissue Robotech toys as part of the ExoSquad line. This triggered another lawsuit by Harmony Gold against FASA, arguing that TCI did not have the rights to license the mecha designs in the first place. The two cases were eventually consolidated.

In the FASA vs. Playmates case, FASA was not able to provide a sufficient burden of proof to prove its case and therefore lost the lawsuit. In the Harmony Gold vs. FASA case, the issue was settled out of court. FASA phased out the mecha designs:

As many of you know, FASA has already phased out of its products a number of designs, including the twelve specific design images that appeared in the Macross series. As a result, BattleTech players will no longer see in future products visual representations of any BattleMechs that FASA did not create. All of the names, fiction and statistics for these 'Mechs, remain in the history of the BattleTech universe. However, to avoid any confusion among players that could occur if the names or statistics of the discontinued 'Mech designs were used with new design images, FASA has no current plans to create new designs for the discontinued 'Mechs. Instead, FASA has chosen to concentrate its efforts on utilizing the more than 160 unique BattleMech designs in its library created specifically by FASA for BattleTech.
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Thanks to a more recent lawsuit, we now know the details of that 1996 settlement:

In addition to agreeing to a monetary payment, Weisman and his co-defendants agreed that they would not “make any use, and will not authorize [their] licensees to make any use, of the visual design images of the twelve (12) Battlemechs listed below except as provided in this agreement.” These 12 “Battlemechs” include those detailed below in Paragraph 27, which presents side-by-side comparisons of Harebrained Schemes’ and Weisman’s current warrior robot designs and the corresponding Harmony Gold Robotech designs. Weisman also agreed to the entry of a permanent injunction and acknowledged that violating the use restriction would cause Harmony Gold “irreparable harm.” Further, Weisman agreed that he would not “contest, nor [would he] assist any other person or entity in contesting, Harmony Gold’s exclusive ownership worldwide, excluding Japan,” of the Robotech merchandising rights. This Settlement Agreement is confidential, and therefore has not been attached to this Complaint.
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These mechs would come to be known by fans as "The Unseen." They wouldn't be unseen for long.
[h=3]Harmony Gold vs. Piranha Games[/h]FASA eventually went out of business, which left the BattleTech rights adrift:

The computer game rights went to Microsoft, and the print-game rights went to WizKids, a company founded by FASA-founder Jordan Weisman, and were then transferred to Catalyst Game Labs. Another company founded by Weisman, Smith & Tinker Inc., has re-licensed the BattleTech computer game rights from Microsoft and is making MechWarrior 5 in partnership with another company called Piranha.
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Piranha partnered with Weisman's Catalyst Game Labs to launch a new Mechwarrior 5 computer game on Kickstarter. It promptly blew past its funding goal with over $2 million dollars. But Mechwarrior 5 was not without controversy:

Catalyst announced they had reobtained the rights to use original images of the “Unseen” mechs and would be publishing them again—until they were brought up short when an unnamed company contacted them about terms of the confidential settlement which included an agreement “that the sole and exclusive world-wide right to [the Macross] mecha (outside of Japan) would rest with another US company.” Catalyst insisted that none of the people it had contacted about the matter prior to this had known of the settlement, but it was complying and hoped to work with the unnamed company in the future.
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That "unnamed company" was Harmony Gold. Harmony Gold hadn't forgotten the previous settlement and was now vigorously defending its brand. Which brings us to this year's lawsuit. The Piranha, Catalyst, Marauder and Warhammer mechs were not -- according to the Kickstarter's FAQ -- the same designs of the verboten Unseen mechs:

Unseen refers to certain imagery, namely the visual appearance of a number of iconic BattleMechs, that has not been depicted in official publications since 1994 for legal reasons. To wit, only their visual appearance may not be officially used anymore; the units as such (particularly their names and game stats) remain part of the BattleTech canon and are even frequently mentioned in novels and fiction. Neither the images nor the units they represent were retconned out. The term is alternatively used to summarily refer to the real-world imagery as such, to the particular in-universe designs (and subvariants) in question, or as an adjective. The list of "Unseen" has repeatedly changed over time, with some individual designs put on and removed from the list several times.
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Harmony Gold disagreed and filed a suit that claims Weisman's involvement with the Piranha video game is in violation of the above settlement agreement. Piranha's counter-argument references the original FASA vs. Playmates case, in which it wasn't provable that one mech design was directly copied from the other. As Meadows puts it:

Piranha seems to be trying to file enough serial numbers off that the designs look similar enough to the originals to be accepted by old-school BattleTech fans, but not close enough to be considered identical. Of course, the problem here is that the original versions of those designs were definitely based on the original Macross designs, because FASA bought licenses to them from someone who (arguably) didn’t actually have the right to sell them. That’s a matter of record, and just changing a few design elements doesn’t erase that history. Nor does it erase that Jordan Weisman agreed to a settlement that said he would prevent any licensees from trying to reuse those designs. It seems to me like it would be hard to claim “coincidence” for those designs, or at least the ones that are more than vaguely similar like the Atlas.
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Are they the same designs? See for yourself. Whatever the outcome, it looks like the robot war isn't over yet.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.