Lou says:
> Actually, FASA didn't settle (at least, that's not what employees were
>told). The judge ruled that while FASA's designs (specifically the Mad Cat)
>*was* copyrightable, he didn't feel that Playmates had infringed on that
>copyright. The case was settled and both parties were stuck with HUGE legal
>fees.
Lou was there (FASA) when this part of it happened, and I would imagine
he has the most accurate take on it from FASA's side of things at the
time.
Teddy says:
>I'm going to have to comment on that one. FASA was *not* at fault in the
>"Battletech/Macross/Harmony Gold mess." To my understanding, FASA needed
>some 'mech designs, so they went to the creaters of macross and asked them
>if they could use their 'mech designs. The japanese said "sure, go ahead."
This is inaccurate, according to what I was told by FASA personnel when
BattleDroids was being introduced. No one at FASA approached the Japanese
owners of the Macross material for rights before BattleDroids (the
original name on the game that would become BattleTech -- and that's
another story) came out, as far as I was told.
Russ says:
>Looking at the original btech set, with NO credit whatsoever to Macross
>or the others, it's pretty likely that the truth is that FASA did not
>bother acquiring rights at first. Makes sense, they were Small Potatoes,
>and TSR didn't bother acquiring rights in similar situations. Also, FASA
>says they acquired the rights in 84-85 (they call that "before" Harmony
>Gold acquired the license, but since Robotech was released in '85, that
>seems dubious), which would be dated after the first FASA product that
>featured Macross-derived art.
I *was* there (working with FASA, albeit at a distance) when the initial
BattleDroids stuff was produced, and Russ' account as stated here is
essentially correct as I was told by FASA personnel at that time. (And
that's what I told the lawyers involved in the dispute who asked me for a
deposition...) FASA bought a bunch of toys based on Macross (and other
Japanese TV series) from the US importer of those toys. (Sort of like if
I were to buy several cases of inexpensive Godzilla/Rodan/Mothra/Ghidrah
toy figures brought over from Japan by an importer, put them in as
playing pieces for a giant monster game of my own creation, drew a
picture of Godzilla and pals for the cover, and called the game "Monstruo
the Giant Fire-Breathing Lizard and his Monster Buddies".) FASA included
the pieces and drawings based on them in BattleDroids, without any rights
derived from the copyright holders on those properties. They used the
external designs in some detail, changing only the names (but often
misinterpreting the designs -- not realizing that some of the mecha were
transformable from fighter planes to human-shape mecha, for example).
Doesn't seem to me that either Playmates or FASA had any call to claim
any moral high ground in the matter. Sounds to me like they both took
shortcuts and both paid for it. It ended up costing them both a bundle,
apparently. Russ is also correct that TSR did similar stuff with material
they should have licensed before using, and got their fingers somewhat
burned, too. So did a number of companies making Star Trek-derived
material, though most of them got away with it pretty much clean. A lot
of people still do, largely by being too small to trigger the
license-holder's radar. But the radar's getting better as popular IP
owners discover these "fringe markets".
And none of this is anywhere NEAR on topic anymore.
Guy McLimore / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
