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[Darrian Wolffe]

Evidently HG is suing Hasbro over the Jetfire Transformers toy (basically the same one Hasbro made back in 1984-5) because it superficially resembles a Valk.

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/other-news-20/harmony-gold-sues-hasbro-over-sdcc-2013-jetfire-skystriker-178084/

What Harmony Gold alleges is that Hasbro's G.I. Joe VS Transformers Jetfire Skystriker toy infringes upon Harmony Gold's rights to the marketing of Macross, including merchandising rights, outside of Japan, based on the resemblance of the toy to the Veritech VF-1 Valkyrie. They allege that the SDCC exclusive toy has caused, and continues to cause, financial damage to their company. As a result Harmony Gold are seeking the withdrawal of the G.I. Joe VS Transformers Jetfire Skystriker toy from sale, seizure of all remaining stock (including Hasbro to "recall from any person or entity known to them who purchased or received... any unauthorized toys or other products based on [Harmony Gold's] copyrighted works"), Hasbro to pay all profits made on the set to Harmony Gold, in addition to damages, legal fees and "exemplary damages in an amount sufficient amount to punish and make a public example of Hasbro, and deter wrongful conduct in future".

Read these bits again:

"seizure of all remaining stock (including Hasbro to "recall from any person or entity known to them who purchased or received... any unauthorized toys or other products based on [Harmony Gold's] copyrighted works")"

and

"exemplary damages in an amount sufficient amount to punish and make a public example of Hasbro, and deter wrongful conduct in future".

They're trying to make an example out of Hasbro and trying to force Hasbro to go after everybody who already bought the convention-exclusive toy at the con and get it back to hand over to HG.  That last is an outright insult to any toy company, which means that Hasbro isn't about to back down on this one.  Which means that we're finally going to have the opportunity to see somebody argue in court that the HG license wasn't (and isn't!  The 2004 Tatsunoko/Big West decision proved that, which is what motivated TPTB to try to bring back the Unseen) valid in the bloody first place.

HG is about to get their legal shit smacked.

Good.

(Also, somebody should probably point out that if anybody owns the "image" of a Valkyrie-based product...it's Grumman)

[Riegien]

 (^_^)b
Had to implement a new smiley for this.

[serrate]

Wow, I hope you're right.

[Hat]

I really hope that HG gets the legal smackdown and stops being such an aggressive bully about things.  I wish they'd just come to a reasonable settlement with Hasbro and Catalyst and stop living in the 80s.  It was easy to pick on FASA given that they were a small company, but Hasbro?  I'm curious if Hasbro wins if this will throw the original 1996 court case with FASA back into question.

With a sweep of his...

Hat

[serrate]

The sad thing is (as a lot of the comments on that story indicate) HG seems to exist solely to make some money through lawsuits. They clearly care absolutely nothing for the actual IP, they purchased their rights as an investment decision many years ago and this is how that investment pays off. Also, I hate them.

What does this mean for us? Let's be realistic here, nothing. Nothing at all except the satisfaction that will come from potentially seeing HG get the smack-down. I think Herb and the the rest of tptb have made it clear that they want nothing to do with properties that weren't produced in-house. And I think they certainly aren't willing to invest money into going back to court, only to retrieve rights to a dozen images that the timeline has moved far beyond anyway. And I wouldn't want them to tbh, what a waste of money for a small company that needs to maximize cash-flow.

As for unseen mechs, thanks to Robotech Tactics we now have a source for those some of those miniatures if you want them. And yes, I realize Paladium is paying HG. 

[Ice]

So if hasbro does win can we then argue the unseens and bring them back

[Darrian Wolffe]

I think Herb and the the rest of tptb have made it clear that they want nothing to do with properties that weren't produced in-house. And I think they certainly aren't willing to invest money into going back to court, only to retrieve rights to a dozen images that the timeline has moved far beyond anyway.

That was actually a decision mandated by Topps (including giving up on the designs that were legally commissioned and paid for by FASA, but drawn by Victor Musical Industries).