Restricted mech designs? Sounds like they should set up a battle mat, grab some dice and see who over-heats first.

lol ^^

Demonstrating once again why trademarks and patents are a bad idea, especially with Disney pushing every time Mickey gets closer to public domain to extend it even more.

Here, here, to a hundred years of trademarked, patented, stale useless shit!

Rocket Man, in this particular case it really was a blatant ripoff of a recent product. The Super Veritech became the Phoenix Hawk, the Warhammer came from the Excalibur, the Annihilator was the MAC II, the Crusader was the Armored Veritech, the Wasp and the Stinger were Veritechs, and the Longbow was the Spartan. And it wasn't after decades, like some more dubious trademark lawsuits... it was pretty much just a year or two after the Robotech series had finished airing in the United States and only a few years after Macross originally aired in Japan.

(Not that it ever got in the way of me having fun with those designs in a Battletech battle. :) )

I'm confused, was there any new mech designs in the trailer that didn't already appear in previous Mechwarrior games? Why didn't Harmony Gold and sue back then? Personally they should just go back to ruining their own franchise: Robotech.

I think they would have a point if the last robotech game I played didn't suck. Alright it was ok, but it had some bad levels (like too tough).

statute of limitations aside, I say give them 10, 15 cents per original copy sold, a nod in the credits, and then tell them to stay the heck out of the game's development. Its a similar idea and design, but they (harmony gold) honestly arn't doing anything. This game isn't an attempt at slander either. If anything this is free advertising and making people get excited about giant robots.

but hey, its a reboot of the series and if its a serious problem, they can just make some new mechs. I know some people would flip their lid but I honestly want a good mech game, and most people want a good mech game (and they don't know it). Honestly, I think it would be kinda cool if they rebooted the serise with all new mechs so they could explore new avenues of gameplay and technology. although that is a little extreame, I would prefer some sort of middle ground.

do we really what to just play with a bunch of old mechs? That's a rehtorical question unless the answer is no.

It'd be a shame if Harmony Gold gets them to pull the Macross designs. I love the Destroid Tomohawk and would be sad not to be able to use it in its guise as the Warhammer.

P.S. I wonder if Harmony Gold would have had as big a problem with the footage had their design actually won the fight? :)

Tommy, FYI, Harmony Gold does continue to develop the Robotech storyline. The "Shadow Chronicles" movie came out only a year or two ago, for example.

I do agree with you that the developers should just make new mech designs. Shogo and Heavy Gear made some decent ones way back in 1997. I don't see why a new Mechwarrior couldn't contain wholly original designs.

When you're dealing with a long-standing IP, one that has a active, interested fanbase, it's always tricky bringing in wholly new designs. You always want some link to the past to keep the original fan base interested (if not entirely happy).

All that said, however, this *is* a trailer they're showing, those designs might not actually be in the game, the Harmony Gold design getting hammered may be some designers tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the the fact that they *can't* use those designs. As we all know trailers (for film AND games) tend to show lots of pretty cutscenes and only teeny weeny snippets of actual gameplay.

In fact, I think that it was somehow on purpose too...

I remember that the first thing that happened when the trailer got released was a lot of people saying: COOOL!!! THEY ARE USING THE UNSEEN AGAIN!!! SO AWESOME!!!


"The Unseen": Mechs that were "seen" then later forbidden to be "seen" (but continued to exist on the storyline and are cited, but never shown a picture), thus becoming "unseen", these are the Mechs related to the previous lawsuit war between Harmony Gold and FASA. It is intersting that they even ended being part of the storyline (the "unseen" mechs were used early on the storyline, and are now regarded as lost technology because noone know how to build them again, the game is not a actual reboot, it will be set between events already written in novels and games, and the era will be around the same era as the "unseen" were not lost technology)

Harmony Gold gets no sympathy from me. They've been awful about bringing the Macross series to the States, and their bullheadedness prevents anyone else from giving it a shot.

Seriously, they need to start co-operating instead of sueing each other ass off.

I first get to know Battletech universe from MechWarrior 2, and this actually made me wanna investigate more into the story and eventually I also read the novels and into the board game etc.

Now if they will calm down and bring their effort into collaborating and it will be a win win situation for them both.

@Lee

All that you mentioned is battletech...

harmony gold has no board game and novels (at least none that I know of, and they are unrelated to the story), what they do is get some good japanese anime, throw them in a bucket, throw a wrecking ball inside, get the trainwreckmashup and broadcast on US. And sue anyone on US that use designs from the japanese anime (while in fact the japanese authors seemly ignore)

oh i see....this sound like someone doing all the hardwork and someone else trying to get a share of the pie....a big share. :(

While you won't get much arguement out of me that Harmony Gold can IMHO act like a 'Patent Troll' at times, in this case I have to totally side with them. A court order from a lawsuit between Harmony Gold and FASA from 1996 says that the designs are essentially HGs to control (along with Studio Nue who won the rights back from Big West in 2000) and HG has the rights to these designs outside of Japan. Its pretty cut and dry. This is why I have zero sympathy for Smith & Tinker nor for Pirahna. They knew since 1996 what they could and could not use with regards to mech design. Weisman was involved in this lawsuit and as such you would think a loss of that nature would not only sting you badly but remind you to steer clear and cover your ass when he chose to pull a hollywood and "relaunch" the Mechwarrior line (and in the process kill the Battletech line his former partners are reviving as a seperate company).

I have no doubt im my mind that Smith and Tinker will lose this lawsuit as well, and while it might be a somewhat simple manner to redo the art, I would think that a consiquence of this problem will be that everything in Mechwarrior 5 will be scrutinized with a fine toothed comb to ensure that no other issues arise and thus will cause delays in the games development. While I might be annoyed at this as a gamer, as side of me is pleased that they will get their just desert for being dicks and thinking that IP law didn't apply to them.

I *think* that all the mechwarrior games excluding the first from tended to focus on the Clan part of the time line and on the Clans themselves. Hence no need to worry about those mechs, the Marauder has the same issue. It was the Zentran officers pod from Macross. But I think they should go for the time of the great refusal the Clans are much more interesting than the Inner Sphere squabbling.

And the Timber Wolf is awesome.

They should just scrap all the existing designs and get Izmojuki http://www.izmojuki.com/ to redesign everything.

I was under the impression that the 'unseen' mechs from the original release of Battletech were somehow granted rights for both electronic and pen/paper publishing. I guess that's not the case after all. Sad.

The problem stems from the fact that the original license holder did not issue exclusive rights in the US, leading to confusion, companies stepping on each others' toes, and frequent law suits.

In the 90s, Playmates attempted to make a toy that used a design that FASA considered non-licensed (Clan Timberwolf/Mad Cat). Playmates used the fact that the design was somewhat similar to one of the licensed designs (Zentradi Officer's Battle Pod) to attempt to win the lawsuit. This is why Playmates re-released a variety of Macross toys under the Exo-Force line at that time. After the matter was settled, FASA decided that it would avoid any further licensing issues by halting the use of all images based on designs that were not 100% internal to the company. This effected the original licensed designs, designs that were 'very similar' to the outside designs, and the designs that FASA hired VMI to create. All such designs are considered 'unseen'.

Under FanPro, the next publisher of BattleTech, a move was taken to create redesigns of the 'unseen'. While the designs are reminiscent of the originals, they are different enough to be considered new. Story-wise, these are also redesigns, not retcons.

Fast-forward to the 25th anniversary of BattleTech. The current company producing BattleTech product, Catalyst, sought to re-secure (exclusive?) rights to the designs in order to re-introduce them to the game, and print a collection of artwork for the anniversary, since most of the early artwork relies heavily on licensed designs. They believed to have the rights secured properly, then after announcing this, Pirana releases the game trailer. At some point after that, another company steped forward (Harmony Gold or Playmates?) and pointed out that as part of a confidential agreement with FASA, they have some rights or say over the use of the Macross designs, rendering whatever deals Catalyst might have had for those designs meaningless.

I don't know if Catalyst's attempts to secure the rights has anything to do with securing the rights to use the designs in a video game. But, at least on the pen-and-paper side of things, that's what has been going down.

That's my understanding of the situation as a non-insider, but long time fan.