Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
In the Japanese courts, it was ruled that Tatsunoko only has the rights to the actual animation of SDF Macross, and nothing else. Harmony Gold dealt only with Tatsunoko, so it doesn't have a legal leg to stand on if anyone were to license any other Macross works. That's probably why Harmony Gold was so willing to cooperate with the Macross toys that are being released in North America by Toynami (it's even advertised on their Robotech.com website). However, the possibility of a US lawsuit still colors any attempt to negotiate such a license, and it will remain that way until the legal issues are completely cleared up. The problem is that a lawsuit, even one that you win, costs a lot of money, and this potential loss can greatly reduce whatever money is to be made on a property.
That's already happening. Starting with the Shadow Chronicles, the Robotech stories have been trying to disassociate themselves from any of the features it had in common with Macross - the only holdovers are the ties, storywise and artwork, to Mospeada. It's quite similar to the way that Battletech has tried to disassociate itself from the artwork they didn't have rights to. The Toynami agreement is a good first step to fixing the mess, but there's a long way to go (and it doesn't really help that Big West doesn't seem to want to Harmony Gold at all).
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Exxelant things are improving and thats all one needs to know when you have a mess of a rights issue like this....but I is still goign to ask..
Tatsunoko owns SDF1 anime but nothing else correct?(who own southern cross and the other one thats in robotch?)
Harmony Gold has some legal hooks still into the franchise at least enough to make setting a new license a headache this is more or less correct?
Big West needs to look at HG as a left over hanger on to a CP issues and give them a carrot probably a few 100K or a couple million make the contract clear and simple that HG gives up any and all claims to anything outside of SDF1 and that any SDF1 refance but it art,tech,characters can be freely used by big west, this will at least let them bring macross to the states and that should be worth whatever money is spent on the contract, I say this because we are talking about the whole macross series here but for SDF1.
Big west should be focusing on setting up a contract with HG that ensures their interests are protected when they license the anime in the US, the other stuff seems to have been worked out but just setting something up as so they are protected from legal action while they have the rest of macross brought to the states is something they should focus on.
Care to go any deeper on the US rights issue, any more info would be greatly appreciated =^^=