Harebrained Schemes - Sued for Copyright Infringement

@SidAlpha Harebrained Schemes is being sued for copyright infringement over Battletech images by Harmony Gold.

Harebrained Schemes is being sued by Harmony Gold, the Distribution rights holder for Robotech over an alleged copyright infringement. The Battletech and Robotech war over likeness rights has waged for close to 25 years. Now, perhaps the age old question might finally be answered once and for all.

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More information.

Since both IPs are not active (yet) it would make sense for robotech to pull a julian gollop and build a newer entry in the franchise rather than fight over likeness. Must be personal. Then again I confuse so it could become an overwatch vs battleborn situation.

Ugh, that sucks. Hope this doesn't cause additional delays with the game and that HBS has a positive outcome in the lawsuit. Skimmed the comments on youtube and seems pretty much everyone is on HBS' side.

How about they stop this litigation BS and both create a quality game?
The customers don't care about some alleged likeness issue.

Wisdom said:

How about they stop this litigation BS and both create a quality game?

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You nut! Where's the fun (or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees) in that?

Just a brief skim of the Wikipedia pages of Harmony Gold and it's founder shows that not only do they have a prolific history of suing people over 'mech likeness' at any opportunity, but that they've also been involved in tax evasion and money laundering schemes. They don't care at all about the mech designs. They're just a predatory, cynical company now targeting an indie game developer for some extra cash and I feel bad for all the people at Harebrained Schemes. Also, the designs don't even vaguely look alike aside from both being humanoid in nature which...it's a mech.

Wisdom said:

How about they stop this litigation BS and both create a quality game?
The customers don't care about some alleged likeness issue.

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The last Robotech game was apparently 10 years ago and was a mobile shooter at that. Harmony Gold seems to think they own the IP rights to any mechs.

Transformers should send Harmony a lawsuit.

The timing looks cynical to me, too. Wait until Harebrained is heavily invested in the development of the game, then see if they will settle for a nice chunk of change to make it go away.

daveyd said:

Ugh, that sucks. Hope this doesn't cause additional delays with the game and that HBS has a positive outcome in the lawsuit. Skimmed the comments on youtube and seems pretty much everyone is on HBS' side.

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At worst they can just pull the couple of Mechs they are getting sued over. Or change their appearance and name a bit.

HG is a blight upon the world and essentially always have been once they garnered any sort of momentum. HBS must be furious at this latest round of nonsense.

Harmony Gold entire business is about suing people for copyright infringements. They are copyrights troll.

I detest the entire copyright and patent system we have in place. In its archaic form it was meant to protect the inventors. Instead its enabling examples like this.

To be fair -

Old Battletech mechs WERE direct rips from Macross / Robotech. Exact copies. Horribly obvious stealing.

Battletech wasn't the only ones, though. There was Jetfire, from Transformers, who was precisely a Veritech as well.

Battletech mech design has come a LONG way from the original designs, but it was very much copying designs way back when.

Merin said:

To be fair -

Old Battletech mechs WERE direct rips from Macross / Robotech. Exact copies. Horribly obvious stealing.

Battletech wasn't the only ones, though. There was Jetfire, from Transformers, who was precisely a Veritech as well.

Battletech mech design has come a LONG way from the original designs, but it was very much copying designs way back when.

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To be Fair-er (and having direct knowledge of the history behind this issue)...
FASA did not rip-off or steal anything. Period! They licensed the designs for several Mechs from the Macross IP for their Battledroids (later renamed Battletech because apparently George Lucas owns the word Droid) game. At the same time Harmony Gold licensed the same designs to use in the Robotech cartoons. This 30 year history of lawsuits comes from Harmony Gold insisting that they actually own all of the licensing rights to those designs and not just for television and movies.

The original issue seems to have been caused by the owners of the Macross IP not being clear enough in their licensing contracts and HG being complete asshats and suing FASA (not to mention threatening lawsuits to every single license holder of the Battletech IP since) over the rights while mainly allowing the IP to languish. At this point the Mechs in question (in Battletech) look almost completely unlike the original designs. They never shared any names and there are so many other Mech-like IPs diluting the water at this point that I can't imagine anyone looking at one of the current designs could ever mistake it for one of the Robotech mecha designs.

TLDR: FASA stole nothing. Do some research.

Change the title, and laugh all the way to the bank. If the game rocks, word will get around, and the monies will pour in. Don't give those silly interfering fools a single dime. If images or context within the game must also be altered, just do it and complete the project. Trust the fans in this endeavour.

Carnifex said:

Change the title, and laugh all the way to the bank. If the game rocks, word will get around, and the monies will pour in. Don't give those silly interfering fools a single dime. If images or context within the game must also be altered, just do it and complete the project. Trust the fans in this endeavour.

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This has nothing to do with the title. It is about 'Mech designs.

What? George Lucas (presumably now Disney) owns the word "droid"? What a weird world we live in. I can only agree with those folk saying our copyright laws feel a bit wrong, at least to a layman like me…

They own it for mobile and wireless devices and related software not for games. I think.
Problems with those trademarks is you have to actively protect them or you lose them. For example, if you let a small company play with your trademark well you cannot complain anymore because a big one does the same..
So the system is built to be ruthless by nature.

Ah, lawsuits... make America great again!!