33 replies to this topic

[kosmos1214]

ok iv heard bits and pieces on the unseen thing and id like to ask for the detales my under standing is

1that fasa licensed mech designs from an import company that had no right to license them out

2 fasa was rather undiplomatic when they where contacted on there use of the unseen

3 fasa got sued and lost

4 the company fasa licensed the designs from was defunked when the lawsute took place

[Mech42Ace]

Look up " Battletech Unseen" a listing for the Battletech wiki will pop up in the listings,
Click on it, it should answer many if not all your questions including what games and shows Fasa "stool" the designs from, and it will list all the unseen mechs too.

Hope this helps

[kosmos1214]

ah thank by the way whats with the stool thing is there a typo i missed???

[Mech42Ace]

Um I don't think you mist anything, I was reading along in an article explaining the whole case Harmony gold had against Fasa, and supposedly Fasa thought that they had bought the rights to these mechs, but Harmony gold accused them of stealing them. Kinda sucks huh? I really like the looks of the "unseens"

[Mech42Ace]

Mech42Ace, on 08 August 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

Um I don't think you missed anything, I was reading along in an article explaining the whole case Harmony gold had against Fasa, and supposedly Fasa thought that they had bought the rights to these mechs, but Harmony gold accused them of stealing them. Kinda sucks huh? I really like the looks of the "unseens"

By the way that was an error on my part, I meant stool as in something stolen ( been a while since I've been in school, lost a good part of what they teach you about "grammar" lol)

[kosmos1214]

ah kk and harmony gold sucks they are the only reason we dont have macross here in the states

[Sug]

Wy ken know won en diss thred spel fer sheet?

[kosmos1214]

im jest a bad speller my self i have no idea about mech here

[Mech42Ace]

I is bd in splling and grammer lol

All joking aside how does one spell stool?!As In stolen!
Stole?

[Mech42Ace]

kosmos1214, on 08 August 2014 - 08:53 PM, said:

ah kk and harmony gold sucks they are the only reason we dont have macross here in the states

Yep, I really wish Harmony gold didn't file the suit against Fasa,
For one:
The unseen Ral Partha mechs go for an obscene amount on evilbay, which drastically decreases my chance of owning one of the designs
For two:
Come on Harmony Gold! Can't you vultures leave a company alone?! My god people!

[Spokes]

Mech42Ace, on 08 August 2014 - 10:27 PM, said:

All joking aside how does one spell stool?!As In stolen!
Stole?

Yes, "stole".

[Mech42Ace]

Ok cool, thanks

[Pht]

kosmos1214, on 08 August 2014 - 07:39 PM, said:

ok iv heard bits and pieces on the unseen thing and id like to ask for the detales my under standing is

1that fasa licensed mech designs from an import company that had no right to license them out

2 fasa was rather undiplomatic when they where contacted on there use of the unseen

3 fasa got sued and lost

4 the company fasa licensed the designs from was defunked when the lawsute took place

Fasa licensed the visuals of several mechs from a toy import company, twentieth century imports, at or around the middle 1980s, when it createed "battletech" (changed from "battledroids" in its very first version).

TCI got the rights to said visuals from a company in japan called tatsunoko.

Tatsunoko was partenered with a company called studio NUE in the venture to make the macross series in japan.

Another US company, harmony gold, also had gotten rights directly from tatsu for the visuals & etc from tatsu; and used said rights to make what's known as robotech in the US, which actually wound up being a mashup of macross and a few other anime series.

It is likely that Fasa and HG BOTH "got" their rights in good faith (no evil intent). In other words, neither Fasa nor hg "stole" what they claimed to have.

HG sent a number of cease-and-decist letters to fasa early on; they were, as I gather, ignored, and nothing ever came of them on either side.

Than, in the early to middle 1990s, Fasa pitched a toy line to Playmates toys. Playmates toys decided to not make the fasa toy line, but it did keep the Fasa promotional materials. Playmates than started working on a toy line for what would later be known as exo squad, and this popped up:



As a prototype toy for the exosquad toys line.

So, obviously, to protect their IP and such, Fasa sued Playmates toys over the above and several other proposed exosquad toys. In the process of the Fasa v Playmates toys suit, Playmates in some way or another tipped off or brought in Hg.

Fasa didn't "win" the playmates toys suit - neither did they lose it - but they DID get a favorable outcome from it, as they managed to prove in court that they had protectible art - ("protectible trade dress") - and fasa WASN'T forced to pay Playmates court and lawyer fees, which would have been an exhorbitant fee. It seems that the courts thought that while Fasa didn't win, they hadn't brought a friviolous/bad faith lawsuit

The lawsuit that hg brought v Fasa wasn't lost by fasa or won by hg ... it was never decided; it was settled out of court in a secret agreement between Fasa and hg, the details of which only the parties to that agreement know, to this day.

As a result, fasa, in order to keep from getting sued again, dropped ALL third party VISUALS from their battletech product line, even those which hg had NO association with. This dropping of third-party assets went through to the battletech storyline (there used to be a unit known as the fighting urak-hai, etc).

Than, sometime in the early 2000s in japan, studio nue/big west got into a lawsuit with tatsunoko over the macross IP. It was eventually decided after multiple cases that, amongst other things, tatsunoko did not have the rights to the macross visuals.

If this was retroactive, it would appear that HG and TCI(thus fasa) had been using rights that tatsunoko didn't have to legally give. In spite of this, HG would go on to issue many more lawsuits over the SN created visuals, and block newer macross releases from the US - something I suspect they are still doing, to this day.


---

I am not a lawyer of any sort, and what follows is PURELY my opinion:

For Catalyst Game labs (current holders of the BT IP rights) to get the rights, clear and free, to use the visuals that HG contests with them, (original artwork done by studio NUE) CGL would have to sue HG and resolve that issue, and than, possibly go into international IP court in japan and litigate anything unsettled between tatsu and studio NUE... and THAN ... get the rights to use the visuals free and clear, from SN.

AKA, won't happen.

Edited by Pht, 11 August 2014 - 06:08 AM.

[The Lost Boy]

Mech42Ace, on 08 August 2014 - 10:31 PM, said:

Yep, I really wish Harmony gold didn't file the suit against Fasa,
For one:
The unseen Ral Partha mechs go for an obscene amount on evilbay, which drastically decreases my chance of owning one of the designs
For two:
Come on Harmony Gold! Can't you vultures leave a company alone?! My god people!

Not true. Ive gotton lots of them on EBAY. Most are not much more than new mechs from Iron Wind. And the new Battlemaster looks better anyway.

[Dawnstealer]

Sug, on 08 August 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

Wy ken know won en diss thred spel fer sheet?

This.

Also, I still want to do a kickstarter to buy the damn license from Harmony Gold so I can have my damn Archer, Warhammer, and Marauder.

[Mech42Ace]

Lemming of the BDA, on 11 August 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

Not true. Ive gotton lots of them on EBAY. Most are not much more than new mechs from Iron Wind. And the new Battlemaster looks better anyway.

Yea, I geuss but so far I've only seen the ones for $40-$70, ( marauder)

[Sandslice]

kosmos1214, on 08 August 2014 - 07:39 PM, said:

ok iv heard bits and pieces on the unseen thing and id like to ask for the detales my under standing is
1that fasa licensed mech designs from an import company that had no right to license them out
2 fasa was rather undiplomatic when they where contacted on there use of the unseen
3 fasa got sued and lost
4 the company fasa licensed the designs from was defunked when the lawsute took place

Ok. Here's the whole thing in a nutshell.

1. In the early to mid 80s, American companies were doing everything they could to get their hands on Japanese mecha designs, and cross-pond licencing was to say the least strange. FASA, for their part, obtained several designs from SDF Macross (Studio Nue / Big West / Tatsunoko)(1) and Taiyou no Kiba Dougram (Sunrise / now Namco-Bandai)(2).

(1)Stinger, Wasp, Valkyrie, Phoenix Hawk, Rifleman, Crusader, Archer, Warhammer, Marauder, Longbow
(2)The Phoenix 'Mechs in MWO, plus Scorpion and Goliath; the Locust is from another Sunrise anime called Crusher Joe.

2. Tatsunoko granted Harmony Gold an overly broad licence to translate Macross - and also Southern Cross (a loosely related anime) and Genesis Climber Mospeada (unrelated.) Carl Macek and crew blended these into a single anime, called Robotech (which took its name from two Revell toy lines, Robotech Defender and Robotech Changer - the latter consisting of veritechs.)

3. As a result of how broad HG's licence was, it was able to stop most Macross imports outright.

4. A dispute arose at some point between FASA and Playmates - and then another between HG and FASA. Neither of these ended in any sort of "victory" beyond Playmates stopping the use of FASA properties, and FASA stopping the use of all out-of-house properties ---

---wherefore the Unseen.

This also included the VMI artwork from TRO 3055 despite it being created by licence - VMI had used the same art to create the Mechwarrior 1989 game (the cover image, for example, is the now-unseen Griffin IIc 1.)

5. There was a recent time (~2009-ish) when it was believed that WizKids had re-obtained the Sunrise licences (which would have restored the Locust and Dougram-based Unseen,) but that was abandoned due to complications.

So there it is.

As for reseeing, it wouldn't just be Harmony Gold. It'd also be Studio Nue (Tatsunoko no longer has a dog in the fight, after a dispute in Japanese courts,) who pro'ly aren't likely to say yes to anyone in the wake of the sheer headache that Macross has been for them.

[Pht]

Dawnstealer, on 11 August 2014 - 12:47 PM, said:

This.

Also, I still want to do a kickstarter to buy the damn license from Harmony Gold so I can have my damn Archer, Warhammer, and Marauder.

Even if HG weren't contesting the visuals, the unseens from macross would probably stay unseens because of the contest in japan between tatusunoko and studio NUE/big west, because the rights that Fasa got was via TCI who got them from ... tatsunoko, and it's the visuals along with the other macross properties that tatsu got into a spat with SN/BW over.

Making the mess even more interesting is the fact that fasa worked directly with studio nue to make the battletech visuals for the japanese release of btech...

Edited by Pht, 12 August 2014 - 08:02 AM.

[kosmos1214]

Lemming of the BDA, on 11 August 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

Not true. Ive gotton lots of them on EBAY. Most are not much more than new mechs from Iron Wind. And the new Battlemaster looks better anyway.

but i dont want a battle master i want a marauder a rifleman and a Valkyrie

[Tezcatli]

kosmos1214, on 14 August 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

but i dont want a battle master i want a marauder a rifleman and a Valkyrie

Find someone with a 3D printer. >_>