1809 replies to this topic

[Brain Cancer]

Honestly, this case is going to be like watching two weasels fight.

HG makes bank off of settlements. PGI probably doesn't have much excess money to throw at them, thus the countersuit.

The result might actually make PGI the heroes who finally threw off Harmony Gold's chains, and if there was an ironic deity looking over it, they might even get some money back from HG for attacking them in the first place beyond court costs.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Quote

If you go back and look at the court information from back in the original 90's suit FASA v Playmates. When Harmony Gold steps in, they tried back then to say that they owned legal rights to "All Bipedal walking war machines."

the next Level HG vs Disnes to use AT-ST,AT-RT Designs for Star wars?

[Requiemking]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 12 August 2017 - 10:45 PM, said:

the next Level HG vs Disnes to use AT-ST,AT-RT Designs for Star wars?

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Oh, by the way fellas, some of the posters over on the Sarna Forums aren't very happy with us.....

[Dee Eight]

W E N D I G O, on 11 August 2017 - 06:56 AM, said:

No at PGI because they provoked this lawsuit by violating copyrights, existing court orders and by simply being greedy. Oh thanks for the reminder of my sig, I put it there to don't forget. Apparently I did though, that's why I was still posting with your lot. Fixed.

How exactly did they provoke a lawsuit for violating copyrights which Harmony Gold didn't actually ever own in the first place ? Harmony Gold, contrary to what they've claimed for decades, never actually bought the copyright to the artwork of SDF:Macross, because the company they purchased the international broadcast rights for the show from (that btw is where HG got started, buying international broadcast rights to existing shows) never actually owned the copyrights in the first place, thus was in no position to actually sell them.

There also were no actual court orders to violate. The only time HG has actually finished a court trial to get to an order from the court stage, was when the judge dismissed their suit with prejudice, when they tried taking on Hasbro a couple years ago. Their fighting with FASA in the 80s/90s only ever resulted in out of court settlement agreements, and those were made with a company which no longer exists. I'm not sure what you believe corporate laws to include, but inheriting a previous legal entity's liabilities isn't one of them, when you buy out their assets.

As to the claims of an agreement with X people individually... well...we've actually only HG's claim that that existed, and they're already well documented liars who have been indicted and convicted of fraud in several courts around the world.


Legal problems

Harmony Gold and its founder, Frank Agrama, have had an extensive history of legal troubles beginning in the early 2000s. Italian investigators discovered and froze bank accounts in Switzerland; five belonging to Agrama. According to another Italian daily, the Corriere della Sera, the five accounts are said to contain SFr140 million ($109.5 million). This early investigation led to two high-profile trials.
Mediaset conviction

On November 29, 2006, federal agents raided Agrama's home and offices in connection with Italy's ongoing tax fraud, embezzlement and false accounting investigation of its former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Court documents revealed the recent search by FBI agents centered on Italian allegations that Agrama, Berlusconi and others fraudulently inflated the price of television rights originally purchased by Agrama so that millions of dollars in kickbacks could be paid to executives of Berlusconi's Mediaset media empire.^[11]
On October 26, 2012, Agrama was convicted after a lengthy trial involving the buying and selling of US film rights to the Mediaset media company at inflated prices.^[12] As his age exceeded 70 years, he was exempted from direct imprisonment and served no actual jail time. According to the Los Angeles Times, on November 21, 2006 prosecutors in Milan, Italy charged Agrama, along with Berlusconi and ten others, in a trial over tax fraud, embezzlement and false accounting at Mediaset.
Mediatrade acquittal

In October 2011, Paddy Chan Mei-yiu and Katherine Hsu May-chun, along with nine others (including Frank Agrama and Pier Silvio Berlusconi, son of Silvio Berlusconi), were indicted by a Milan court and charged with buying rights for US television series and movies, then reselling them to broadcasting rights firm Mediatrade (a subsidiary of Mediaset) at inflated prices and laundering the money in a complex scheme. The four companies allegedly involved in this scheme were Wiltshire Trading, Harmony Gold, CS Secretaries and Loong Po Management.^[13]
According to prosecutors, Chan met Agrama in Cannes, France in the late 1970s at a trade fair and they decided to form a partnership to trade movie rights internationally. Chan organized a Hong Kong-based Harmony Gold Limited in 1979, records from the city's Companies Registry show. In the same year, Agrama organized Agrama Film Enterprises on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Four years later, he set up Harmony Gold USA. He later also became the Los Angeles representative of another Hong Kong company established by Chan, Wiltshire Trading.
Prosecutors estimated the illicit profits between 1988 and 1999 amounted to US$170 million. Earlier in 2005, Swiss investigators froze 150 million francs (HK$1.29 billion) at a UBS branch in Lugano belonging to Harmony Gold, Wiltshire Trading and other companies.^[14]
On July 24, 2014, Variety reported that some of the charges have been dropped due to expiring statute of limitations.^[15] An appeals hearing was set to take place January 20, 2016.^[16] On January 18, 2016, all charges against Frank Agrama and five other people were dropped. Berlusconi and Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri were convicted and were sentenced to 13 months of imprisonment.^[17]
Legal issues regarding Macross copyright

Harmony Gold, via its license of Robotech, is the co-copyright owner in the US for images of mecha from the component series of the show, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. They have pursued multiple lawsuits against anyone using mecha which even vaguely resemble these designs.
Most notably, many early designs used in Battletech, such as the Warhammer, Valkyrie, and Marauder, were licensed directly from the Japanese producers of Macross, with the overlapping rights mistake not being realized for nearly a decade. Harmony Gold sued FASA, and as a result these designs were removed from the game. Fan outcry over 'The Unseen' has led to multiple attempts to negotiate deals allowing for resumed use of the designs, but despite in one case a sourcebook going to press before being abruptly pulled, no deal has ever been reached. As a result of the failed negotiations, the producers of Battletech ruled that any designs not developed in house would no longer be used in order to avoid future issues.
Harmony Gold issued cease and desist orders against sites displaying images and trailers from the deceased video game MechWarrior, due to one of the mechs used in the trailer being a Warhammer.^[18] The company claims that the images portray ’mechs that they own the rights to, according to a legal settlement from 1996.^[19]
The legal status of Harmony Gold's license to Macross is dubious. Harmony Gold's license for Macross came from Tatsunoko Production, but Japanese courts ruled that it was Studio Nue (creators of the series) that controls the Macross intellectual property. The license Tatsunoko was given was for international distribution outside Japan only, and does not allow them to control the intellectual property. According to the US Copyright Office, Harmony Gold is the Co-Copyright owner.
In 2013, Harmony Gold claimed in Federal Court that Hasbro's SDCC 2013 exclusive set "G.I. Joe vs Transformers The Epic Conclusion" violated their copyright license and trademarks on the animated Japanese Macross TV series (1982–84).^[20] On September 23, 2013, Harmony Gold's suit against Hasbro was dismissed with prejudice, and Hasbro was allowed to continue to sell the sets. ^[21]

Edited by Dee Eight, 13 August 2017 - 02:09 AM.

[The Basilisk]

Dee Eight, on 13 August 2017 - 02:04 AM, said:

^{[...]too much to quote[...]}

Thanks, awsome work there.

[Brain Cancer]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 12 August 2017 - 10:45 PM, said:

the next Level HG vs Disnes to use AT-ST,AT-RT Designs for Star wars?

No, HG has zero chance vs. Disney's deep pockets and superpotent legal department. I -wish- they'd try that with Disney and pay the price.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Brain Cancer, on 13 August 2017 - 02:16 AM, said:

No, HG has zero chance vs. Disney's deep pockets and superpotent legal department. I -wish- they'd try that with Disney and pay the price.

Yeah, they're not THAT stupid.

They do seem to love the idea however of going after "smaller" company's.

Requiemking, on 12 August 2017 - 11:31 PM, said:

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Oh, by the way fellas, some of the posters over on the Sarna Forums aren't very happy with us.....

oh, why's that?

[AzureRathalos]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 11 August 2017 - 10:16 AM, said:

Fast Forward to the 2012 Hasbro vs Harmony Gold suit, Were HG AGAIN, tried to say they owned the rights to "All bipedal war machines and transforming war machines." And was again, laughed out of court for this notion, with that case being dismissed with prejudice.

That one was settled out of court, so we don't know the full results. One thing is for certain though, HG failed in their attempt to stop Hasbro from releasing the San Diego Comic Con Jetfire toy and they certainly did not try again when other Jetfire toys appeared in later years.

Oh, another history note: HG is exceptionally bitter about the existence of Jetfire, because it prevented them from making a Macross Robotech toy line back in the day. There's no point in making a toy line if they can't have their title card transforming plane.

[Burningtoast]

Harmony Gold is a parasite company that does not produce anything new and tries to suck the life blood from other IP's. I know this suit is more complex than that but the Japanese company that created Macross did not invent the concept of mech's or giant robots. PGI is their type of target as they are not a company with deep pockets or a massive legal department and I would be willing to bet any amount of money you care to name that Harmony Gold has already floated a settlement offer to make this suit go away. As a child of the 80's I loved Robotech but at this point Harmony Gold should go away.

[Dee Eight]

They couldn't have made a Robotech toy line anyway. Revell Models held the rights to sell model kits for all the original toys and owned all the molds. There were even transforming valkyries as part of that model line. It was called the Robotech Defenders and Robotech Changers series and other than the name and font, actually had nothing to do with HG's Robotech series. They were already on the market and being sold when HG was having Carl Macek edit Robotech together.

https://en.wikipedia...otech_Defenders

Edited by Dee Eight, 13 August 2017 - 05:21 AM.

[Requiemking]

CMDR Sunset Shimmer, on 13 August 2017 - 03:13 AM, said:

Yeah, they're not THAT stupid.

They do seem to love the idea however of going after "smaller" company's.



oh, why's that?

They blame greed from PGI and HBS as the source of this lawsuit. "If only those greedy b******* at PGI and HBS hasn't used the unseen art, this wouldn't have happened", seems to be their general logic.

[Pariah Devalis]

Requiemking, on 13 August 2017 - 06:21 AM, said:

They blame greed from PGI and HBS as the source of this lawsuit. "If only those greedy b******* at PGI and HBS hasn't used the unseen art, this wouldn't have happened", seems to be their general logic.

What I don't get is this:

They want to use the unseens, right? Well, doing nothing would still result in not getting to use the unseens. By putting unseen back in MWO/BT, we get to use the unseens. HG threatens legal action? So what? It isn't like anyone was able to enjoy the original mechs, anyways. What the hell does it change if HG wants to try and sue?

"Waa, because of the lawsuit, we can't use the unseen mechs that... we already couldn't actually use."
Someone, please, I beg of you, explain that logic to me?

[Lootee]

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam came out around the same time as Robotech started showing in the USA. It has since been released in a 2 box DVD set here. Maybe Whoremoney ***** will get froggy and try to exert their non-existent copyright on the transformable robot concept against Bandai.

Would love to see them crushed like a bug by the Japanese giant.

Edited by Lootee, 13 August 2017 - 07:17 AM.

[Bombast]

Pariah Devalis, on 13 August 2017 - 07:04 AM, said:

What I don't get is this:

They want to use the unseens, right? Well, doing nothing would still result in not getting to use the unseens. By putting unseen back in MWO/BT, we get to use the unseens. HG threatens legal action? So what? It isn't like anyone was able to enjoy the original mechs, anyways. What the hell does it change if HG wants to try and sue?

"Waa, because of the lawsuit, we can't use the unseen mechs that... we already couldn't actually use."
Someone, please, I beg of you, explain that logic to me?

...I don't really understand what you're asking. The reason they weren't using alleged Robotech derived designs is because it would cost them money from a lawsuit. The reason they are using them now is because the financial gains, from current sales and potential sales in latter products, is high enough to justify the legal cost of sorting this out, now, presumably forever.

No one currently working on Battletech/Mechwarrior is bemoaning the unseen based on some vague 'But we wanna use them' notion. These are businesses - It's about money. It was about money way back when, when Weisman had to sign all those papers because they didn't have the money to duke it out with HG, and it's about it now.

Or, more directly - The Unseen has never REALLY been about the designs to Battletech. It's always been about the lawsuit and the money.

[Pariah Devalis]

Bombast, on 13 August 2017 - 07:13 AM, said:

...I don't really understand what you're asking. The reason they weren't using alleged Robotech derived designs is because it would cost them money from a lawsuit. The reason they are using them now is because the financial gains, from current sales and potential sales in latter products, is high enough to justify the legal cost of sorting this out, now, presumably forever.

No one currently working on Battletech/Mechwarrior is bemoaning the unseen based on some vague 'But we wanna use them' notion. These are businesses - It's about money. It was about money way back when, when Weisman had to sign all those papers because they didn't have the money to duke it out with HG, and it's about it now.

Or, more directly - The Unseen has never REALLY been about the designs to Battletech. It's always been about the lawsuit and the money.

No, that isn't what I'm referencing, at all. There are people here bitching about "PGI's greed spoiling the unseen for everyone."

Except nobody was using the unseens anyways.

That lack of logical flow confuses the hell out of me. How can PGI ruin something if that something was already ruined? Frankly, what PGI did for the unseen is the best thing to happen to them in the last few decades.

[Bombast]

Pariah Devalis, on 13 August 2017 - 07:27 AM, said:

No, that isn't what I'm referencing, at all. There are people here bitching about "PGI's greed spoiling the unseen for everyone."

Oh. Yah, I haven't a clue about that jazz.

Personally, I kind of think how PGI went about this was the wrong move, but not because I think they are wrong in some legal way, and I understand why they did it the way they did. And I know that the way I would have handled it would have likely gotten Russ death threats for decades, and probably would have been a pretty big short term money loss.

[Juodas Varnas]

Bombast, on 13 August 2017 - 07:31 AM, said:

Oh. Yah, I haven't a clue about that jazz.

Personally, I kind of think how PGI went about this was the wrong move, but not because I think they are wrong in some legal way, and I understand why they did it the way they did. And I know that the way I would have handled it would have likely gotten Russ death threats for decades, and probably would have been a pretty big short term money loss.

Something something Project Phoenix designs?

[Bombast]

Juodas Varnas, on 13 August 2017 - 07:42 AM, said:

Something something Project Phoenix designs?

No. I would have found some artist who's never heard of Battletech or Macross or anything like that from some far away land, maybe an old Soviet satellite state that still has shaky internet coverage, handed him a loose written description of the mechs (Particle cannons in the arms and a spot light in the torso for the Warhammer, for example), maybe some examples of PGI 'unified aesthetic' mechs that aren't related to the unseen just so they could get a jist of what the mech would be walking next to, and used that. Document the whole ordeal, use those design, wham bam done.

Yes, I know all the 'But nostalgia!' arguments, and the 'You're disrespecting the franchise' complaints. I've already gotten my toasting over on the Battletech forum, no need to retread here. Needless to say, if you (The royal you, not just you, Quadman) have an objection, I've heard it. That' just how I would have done it. Obviously unpopular.

[Kanil]

Considering the sales you'd get for that, wouldn't it just be better to not bother in the first place, and avoid them entirely?

[Bombast]

Kanil, on 13 August 2017 - 08:01 AM, said:

Considering the sales you'd get for that, wouldn't it just be better to not bother in the first place, and avoid them entirely?

Part of the problem, obviously. But it would clear it up once and for all.

Honestly, maybe it was too late for that. It's something that should have been done over a decade ago, before half of the people who are so attached to these designs even started playing. Yah, thats right, I know the secret - Battletech's average fan age is fairly old, but its not so old that every single person who thinks these designs are of the utmost importance actually knew about them before **** hit the fan.