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News Digest: BattleTech Lawsuit Dismissed, Gygax Estate Licenses Unpublished Games, Deadpool RPG Cov
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<blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 7742873" data-attributes="member: 6669048"><p>That's a separate thing and something Piranha's lawyers latched onto hard that I kind of edited down to a brief summary because...seriously, I think I wrote about 1000 words before I started editing down that section.</p><p></p><p>The lawsuit has a few major questions at its heart, all of which have come up before in relation to Harmony Gold and BattleTech, but none of which have ever been answered because the lawsuits always got settled first. In order, the questions are:</p><p></p><p></p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Can someone own the rights to a mech(a) design? Playmates brought this up in the lawsuit from FASA in 1996 that started this whole mess when they copied the design of the Timber Wolf (no it is not a "Mad Cat" you Inner Sphere freebirth scum!)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">How close do designs need to be to one another before they're infringing? We're talking about humanoid bipedal machines. They're going to have a lot more similarities than differences after a while, especially when there's hundreds of games, manga, anime, movies, TV, novels, and more all creating new ones.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Does Harmony Gold have the legal authority in the United States to sue another company over these rights? Harmony Gold is a licensor of the Macross anime and related products from Bandai and Big West (and indirectly at that). They may not have the legal authority to go after infringement any more than Netflix would someone selling unlicensed Star Trek uniforms just because they have the rights to stream Star Trek. And that's <em>if</em> Harmony Gold even <em>has </em>the rights they claim they do, since they got the rights to make Robotech from a third party licensor in Japan who may or may not have the ability to sublicense the exclusive international rights they claim. Which is <em>highly </em>likely because of previous lawsuits over the distribution of Macross anime TV episodes and films as well as Macross merchandise and toys imported from Japan.</li> </ol><p></p><p>To win, Harmony Gold has to get a positive answer to all three questions. To lose, they only have to miss one. And any single one of those as a "loss" opens up the Unseen to be used again completely. And the last potentially means losing the rights to Macross altogether.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Abstruse, post: 7742873, member: 6669048"] That's a separate thing and something Piranha's lawyers latched onto hard that I kind of edited down to a brief summary because...seriously, I think I wrote about 1000 words before I started editing down that section. The lawsuit has a few major questions at its heart, all of which have come up before in relation to Harmony Gold and BattleTech, but none of which have ever been answered because the lawsuits always got settled first. In order, the questions are: [LIST=1] [*]Can someone own the rights to a mech(a) design? Playmates brought this up in the lawsuit from FASA in 1996 that started this whole mess when they copied the design of the Timber Wolf (no it is not a "Mad Cat" you Inner Sphere freebirth scum!) [*]How close do designs need to be to one another before they're infringing? We're talking about humanoid bipedal machines. They're going to have a lot more similarities than differences after a while, especially when there's hundreds of games, manga, anime, movies, TV, novels, and more all creating new ones. [*]Does Harmony Gold have the legal authority in the United States to sue another company over these rights? Harmony Gold is a licensor of the Macross anime and related products from Bandai and Big West (and indirectly at that). They may not have the legal authority to go after infringement any more than Netflix would someone selling unlicensed Star Trek uniforms just because they have the rights to stream Star Trek. And that's [I]if[/I] Harmony Gold even [I]has [/I]the rights they claim they do, since they got the rights to make Robotech from a third party licensor in Japan who may or may not have the ability to sublicense the exclusive international rights they claim. Which is [I]highly [/I]likely because of previous lawsuits over the distribution of Macross anime TV episodes and films as well as Macross merchandise and toys imported from Japan. [/LIST] To win, Harmony Gold has to get a positive answer to all three questions. To lose, they only have to miss one. And any single one of those as a "loss" opens up the Unseen to be used again completely. And the last potentially means losing the rights to Macross altogether. [/QUOTE]
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