Harmony Gold suing Tatsunoko

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

So, BW refusing to do business with Tatsunoko is an interesting twist to this I hadn't heard before.  Not that they really have any reason to really do so, I suppose, but I wonder if BW is playing their own waiting game with Tatsunoko, hoping they'll go under, or offer up the distribution rights willingly.

I'm not certain they're unwilling to do business with Tatsunoko so much as they're unwilling to do business with Tatsunoko on Tatsunoko's terms.

They'd probably rather have Tatsunoko approach them, so they can negotiate from a place of strength.

 

7 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Given the lack of action on that end of the globe, I have to wonder if BW is just perfectly content not having to deal with international distribution for Macross at all,

Big West is sinking a LOT of money and time into securing trademarks on the Macross name and logos outside of Japan right now... I think it's pretty safe to say they are NOT content to ignore untapped markets or concede them to Harmony Gold.

 

7 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

and doesn't see any reason they should have to pay anything to get back what they never actually sold to Tatsunoko in the first place, and HG claims they now have.  

Where the f*ck are you getting this?  They demonstrably did give Tatsunoko the rights Tatsunoko licensed to Harmony Gold.  If they hadn't, we wouldn't be in this mess.  It was Big West who approached Tatsunoko about getting involved in the original series production, not the other way around.

 

7 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

 While we'd all love them to sell official Macross merchandise here, the perceived value of this market may not be worth the loss of face and and effort it would cost them to basically pay what amounts to a ransom note for the IP HG laid its claim on.

Didn't stop them from curb-checking HG in the UK to sell Delta merch and secure the trademarks there... and challenging HG in the EU and China.

[Chronocidal]

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Where the f*ck are you getting this?  They demonstrably did give Tatsunoko the rights Tatsunoko licensed to Harmony Gold.  If they hadn't, we wouldn't be in this mess.  It was Big West who approached Tatsunoko about getting involved in the original series production, not the other way around.

Nothing to back this up at all, just speculation and dramatic exaggeration on my part.  I know they offered up the original distribution rights to Tatsunoko to help fund the series.

My understanding though was that Tatsunoko never owned what HG claimed they purchased from them, and was never theirs to begin with.  Paying off Tatsunoko to get those distribution rights back now smells slightly like paying a ransom to get back control of portions of the franchise they never intended to sell.

I know there's a lot of legal language involved in exactly what Tatsunoko was granted, but I was always under the impression that, either by accident or design, they never made any attempt to clarify that what HG claimed they purchased was not something Tatsunoko was legally able to sell.

I am glad to hear they're investing in the international market though.  I saw the bit about Delta merchandise in the UK, but didn't know the scope of their pursuit of the international market.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Chronocidal

[HardlyNever]

7 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Big West is sinking a LOT of money and time into securing trademarks on the Macross name and logos outside of Japan right now... I think it's pretty safe to say they are NOT content to ignore untapped markets or concede them to Harmony Gold.

I've seen the news that BW secured trademark rights in the UK.  That's the only place outside of Japan that I've seen, personally.  Is there anywhere else outside of Japan and the UK that BW is working on securing the Macross trademark rights?

How do we know how much money they are actually putting in to it?  How much is a "LOT," relatively or absolutely speaking?

[jenius]

BW will NEVER be able to deal with Tatsunoko from a position of strength. BW is tiny in comparison to Tatsunoko (which is owned by TakaraTomy). BW's being so small is probably also what allows them to take such principled stances as not dealing with Tatsunoko. It would probably take a third party and a lot of cash to mend the woes there. We discuss BW buying the rights back but the more likely scenario would probably be Tatsunoko buying BW... that would be crazy, then maybe TakaraTomy would make Macross toys. I guess you can't buy a company that refuses to acknowledge you though!

[jenius]

4 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Nothing to back this up at all, just speculation and dramatic exaggeration on my part.  I know they offered up the original distribution rights to Tatsunoko to help fund the series.

My understanding though was that Tatsunoko never owned what HG claimed they purchased from them, and was never theirs to begin with.  Paying off Tatsunoko to get those distribution rights back now smells slightly like paying a ransom to get back control of portions of the franchise they never intended to sell.

I know there's a lot of legal language involved in exactly what Tatsunoko was granted, but I was always under the impression that, either by accident or design, they never made any attempt to clarify that what HG claimed they purchased was not something Tatsunoko was legally able to sell.

I am glad to hear they're investing in the international market though.  I saw the bit about Delta merchandise in the UK, but didn't know the scope of their pursuit of the international market.

HG through their history has made a lot of money capitalizing on poorly written contracts (including stuff outside Macross).  So, what likely happened is that Tatsunoko and HG made a deal. The deal they made was silent on IP as was the deal Tatsunoko made with BW. The contracts were llike "You have international rights to Macross" but there was an understanding that that meant just the footage. Over the years, HG started pushing boundaries, making trademarks, and kind of squatting on the license. Tatsunoko had no reason to care and neither did BW for a while since Macross was done. As Macross started to revitalize the stuff hit the fan and HG was like "Look, the contract doesn't say we CAN'T do some of this stuff so... we're gonna." Then you get into the cascading lawsuits that clarified the terms of all the contracts.

[Chronocidal]

1 minute ago, jenius said:

BW will NEVER be able to deal with Tatsunoko from a position of strength. BW is tiny in comparison to Tatsunoko (which is owned by TakaraTomy). BW's being so small is probably also what allows them to take such principled stances as not dealing with Tatsunoko. It would probably take a third party and a lot of cash to mend the woes there. We discuss BW buying the rights back but the more likely scenario would probably be Tatsunoko buying BW... that would be crazy, then maybe TakaraTomy would make Macross toys. I guess you can't buy a company that refuses to acknowledge you though!

Oh, that's enlightening on an entirely different level.  

This actually makes me wonder if Bandai would be in a position to purchase Big West outright, if they considered it to be beneficial in some way.

[jenius]

1 minute ago, Chronocidal said:

Oh, that's enlightening on an entirely different level.  

This actually makes me wonder if Bandai would be in a position to purchase Big West outright, if they considered it to be beneficial in some way.

You win, that's way more plausible than Tatsunoko buying BW... then Bandai could buy the rights from Tatsunoko since they'd be willing to talk... assuming HG's new agreement has a relatively standard industry term.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

My understanding though was that Tatsunoko never owned what HG claimed they purchased from them, and was never theirs to begin with.

That was (allegedly) a misunderstanding on Harmony Gold's part, when they were sending out threatening letters to toy importers in 1999-2001 claiming that those importers were violating Harmony Gold's exclusive rights to Macross worldwide by importing Macross toys (from shows HG didn't actually have the rights to).  Whether said misunderstanding on HG's part was an actual misunderstanding or they hoped they wouldn't get called on it if they lied a little to protect the nascent Toynami license is unclear, since a deliberate lie is entirely in character for them but the events of the Tatsunoko arbitration also demonstrated that their legal counsel really is THAT stupid.

AFAIK, HG has never claimed to have outright bought Tatsunoko's stake in Macross... just a limited-duration license to it.

 

1 hour ago, HardlyNever said:

I've seen the news that BW secured trademark rights in the UK.  That's the only place outside of Japan that I've seen, personally.  Is there anywhere else outside of Japan and the UK that BW is working on securing the Macross trademark rights?

The European Union and People's Republic of China have both seen recent trademark filings by Big West, which HG is attempting to dispute but with little prospect for success due to trademark law in those territories preferencing owner over first user.  (They have reportedly already secured some classes of trademark for Macross in China, while the EU courts are referencing Big West's successful UK filing as precedent for granting Big West's Macross trademark in the EU.)

 

Quote

How do we know how much money they are actually putting in to it?  How much is a "LOT," relatively or absolutely speaking?

Well, they have to retain an IP law-specialist law firm in each market, and that ain't cheap... the ones I know here in the US bill upwards of $250/hr per head for services rendered.

 

1 hour ago, jenius said:

BW will NEVER be able to deal with Tatsunoko from a position of strength. BW is tiny in comparison to Tatsunoko (which is owned by TakaraTomy).

Not quite what I was getting at.

Yes, Tatsunoko Production is a bigger company than Big West... but financially, Tatsunoko Production isn't really better off than Big West is.  The 2010s haven't been kind to them or their bottom line.  Having Nippon TV come to their rescue and buy a majority (54.3%) stake in the company and adopt them as a subsidiary helped but their financial outlook is still shaky at best.  They finished FY2017 ¥50 million (~$450K) in the red, and they're limping along without any real successes in their portfolio for FY2018 and FY2019 thanks to go90's sinking without trace as a platform for their Transformers shorts and the failure to launch of The Price of Smiles.  (Takara Tomy's stake in Tatsunoko is only 20%, the other two major stakeholders are talent agency Horipro with 13.5% and Production I.G. with 11.2%.)

Tatsunoko wants a guaranteed winner, and Big West is sitting on one that Tatsunoko feels it's entitled to... even if the law doesn't agree.  

Big West could negotiate with Tatsunoko from a position of relative strength because they have what Tatsunoko craves most of all: a highly popular steady earner.

(Basically, Big West would probably work with Tatsunoko if Tatsunoko approached them about it... but they don't need Tatsunoko and they know Tatsunoko needs what they have, so they're not going to make the first move.)

 

Quote

BW's being so small is probably also what allows them to take such principled stances as not dealing with Tatsunoko. It would probably take a third party and a lot of cash to mend the woes there. We discuss BW buying the rights back but the more likely scenario would probably be Tatsunoko buying BW... that would be crazy, then maybe TakaraTomy would make Macross toys. I guess you can't buy a company that refuses to acknowledge you though!

Tatsunoko can barely afford to keep the lights on in the studio most years, they're a long damn way from having the money to buy a ramen stand... never mind an advertising agency that owns a hit animated franchise.  They're probably thanking their lucky stars they were able to convince HG to drop the lawsuit and wave their obligations from the arbitration, or that might've been the end of them.  

Edited July 25, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[HardlyNever]

23 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The European Union and People's Republic of China have both seen recent trademark filings by Big West, which HG is attempting to dispute but with little prospect for success due to trademark law in those territories preferencing owner over first user.  (They have reportedly already secured some classes of trademark for Macross in China, while the EU courts are referencing Big West's successful UK filing as precedent for granting Big West's Macross trademark in the EU.)

That's interesting, especially if Macross makes it to the EU.  We could get a glimpse of what would have happened here in the US, for better or worse.

Do you have any links/sources for those?  I can't find anything regarding the Macross license in China, and everything for the EU just brings up the UK filing.

[Bolt]

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Given the lack of action on that end of the globe, I have to wonder if BW is just perfectly content not having to deal with international distribution for Macross at all, and doesn't see any reason they should have to pay anything to get back what they never actually sold to Tatsunoko in the first place, and HG claims they now have.  

In a nut shell, I believed.

4 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

While we'd all love them to sell official Macross merchandise here, the perceived value of this market may not be worth the loss of face and and effort it would cost them to basically pay what amounts to a ransom note for the IP HG laid its claim on.

In another nut shell..ya

It’s really whacked the way HG’s face man presents this air of “really wanting to bring Macross” over to the states.. As if it’s something they’re working on( or even remotely capable of). Along with the “big stuff happening in the next 18 months” repeat tag line.

[sketchley]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, they have to retain an IP law-specialist law firm in each market, and that ain't cheap... the ones I know here in the US bill upwards of $250/hr per head for services rendered.

Just to clarify, for my US based MWers, the US legal costs are the world's most expensive.

In other words, the US is probably going to be the last place that BW starts making legal moves to reacquire copyrights, etc., if it ever does.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

Just to clarify, for my US based MWers, the US legal costs are the world's most expensive.

In other words, the US is probably going to be the last place that BW starts making legal moves to reacquire copyrights, etc., if it ever does.

The US is also the one key market where Big West would be at a distinct disadvantage unless Harmony Gold went under, since the US trademark laws are written to counterintuitively favor the first user of a mark over the actual owner of the brand/property.  The vast majority of the rest of the world takes the vastly more sensible opposite view.

I expect the trademark law situation to resolve itself around the same time we switch to metric.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

It’s really whacked the way HG’s face man presents this air of “really wanting to bring Macross” over to the states.. As if it’s something they’re working on( or even remotely capable of). Along with the “big stuff happening in the next 18 months” repeat tag line.

Oh, they've tried once before... but, as was revealed by folks on the side, it wasn't so much an attempt to bring Macross over as a laughably ill-considered attempt to extort Macross's owners into selling the franchise to them.

Harmony Gold will never willingly let Macross into the states unless they can profit from it, which would lead to them shelving their own franchise if the profit picture turned out to be better.  I get the feeling Tommy would actually prefer it that way, he seems to like the originals a lot more than the Robotech versions and I know he's a fan of at least a few Macross sequels.

[pengbuzz]

On 7/25/2019 at 11:02 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, they've tried once before... but, as was revealed by folks on the side, it wasn't so much an attempt to bring Macross over as a laughably ill-considered attempt to extort Macross's owners into selling the franchise to them.

Harmony Gold will never willingly let Macross into the states unless they can profit from it, which would lead to them shelving their own franchise if the profit picture turned out to be better.  I get the feeling Tommy would actually prefer it that way, he seems to like the originals a lot more than the Robotech versions and I know he's a fan of at least a few Macross sequels.

And thus, HG will sit at the "gates", unwilling to let anyone else profit from Macross until the end of time itself.

[Lolicon]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And thus, HG will sit at the "gates", unwilling to let anyone else profit from Macross until the end of time itself.

That's nonsense. In a few billion years the sun will run the of nuclear fuel and swell into a red giant, obliterating the Earth and HG with it. 

There's always an upside! 

[JB0]

22 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

That's nonsense. In a few billion years the sun will run the of nuclear fuel and swell into a red giant, obliterating the Earth and HG with it. 

There's always an upside! 

The cleansing thermonuclear fires take so LONG, though!

[pengbuzz]

35 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

That's nonsense. In a few billion years the sun will run the of nuclear fuel and swell into a red giant, obliterating the Earth and HG with it. 

There's always an upside! 

No...I heard that HG wants to get a court order preventing it from turning into a red giant. Their reasoning: it would look too much like the RDF symbol!

Edited July 28, 2019 by pengbuzz

[DewPoint]

2 hours ago, abbadon said:

 

New Project?

What are the chances that this will get twisted into some new Robotech thing?

[jenius]

Maybe that's what HG was hinting at their panel!

[Bolt]

Concept art looks killa.

[Old_Nash]

22 hours ago, DewPoint said:

What are the chances that this will get twisted into some new Robotech thing?

OHMYGREATLUNA *.*

[JB0]

22 hours ago, DewPoint said:

What are the chances that this will get twisted into some new Robotech thing?

Oh, they're making a fourth season of Macross?

 

...

 

Actually... serious question. Are we past the point where the uninformed think RT's "Masters Saga" and "New Generation" are the second and third season of Macross, or are the robotechies making sure confusion reigns supreme to this day?

[DewPoint]

I have co-workers that loved Robotech when they were young, but all they've ever done was watch it on TV.  They've even owned toys, but they've never looked any further than that.  Everything that is Macross, Southern Cross, or Mospeada is Robotech to them.  They have even owned Orguss toys without knowing anything about it.

[Marzan]

On 7/25/2019 at 9:17 PM, HardlyNever said:

I've seen the news that BW secured trademark rights in the UK.  That's the only place outside of Japan that I've seen, personally.  Is there anywhere else outside of Japan and the UK that BW is working on securing the Macross trademark rights?

How do we know how much money they are actually putting in to it?  How much is a "LOT," relatively or absolutely speaking?

 

Big West and an Italian representative are currently going through  a process to secure the rights for the word "Macross"  for several types of merchandise in the European Union (they already have secured the trademark to Macross Delta). HG is of course opposing this (you can say a lot of things about their creative staff, but their legal department is absolutely formidable).

Big West has a pretty decent chance in the EU system, which is much more sympathetic to original creators of content/work than marketers/distributors.

[Bolt]

Sounds  like hg puts their money into legal talent instead of original thinking or creative talent.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 7/29/2019 at 1:26 AM, JB0 said:

Actually... serious question. Are we past the point where the uninformed think RT's "Masters Saga" and "New Generation" are the second and third season of Macross, or are the robotechies making sure confusion reigns supreme to this day?

No... there are still casual Robotech fans who don't know, and Robotech fans themselves constantly muddy the waters with the aforementioned constant efforts to "adopt" Macross sequel content into Robotech.

I get, as webmaster for the Macross Mecha Manual, 1-2 emails every month asking why the site doesn't cover Robotech-specific mecha like the "YF-1R" or the mecha of the Southern Cross and MOSPEADA shows.

 

 

6 hours ago, Marzan said:

HG is of course opposing this (you can say a lot of things about their creative staff, but their legal department is absolutely formidable).

Their legal counsel is formidable precisely because it isn't theirs.  

If they had an in-house corporate lawyer I'm sure he/she would be as dozy and incompetent as the rest of the HG staff.  Their lawyers are only capable because they don't work for Harmony Gold itself.

[pengbuzz]

46 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I get, as webmaster for the Macross Mecha Manual, 1-2 emails every month asking why the site doesn't cover Robotech-specific mecha like the "YF-1R" or the mecha of the Southern Cross and MOSPEADA shows.

You're the webmaster for the Macross Mecha Manual? Wow...I had no clue!

On that note: I just read the acknowledgments there. I hang my head in shame at not knowing how many folks from here contributed there. O.o

46 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Their legal counsel is formidable precisely because it isn't theirs.  

If they had an in-house corporate lawyer I'm sure he/she would be as dozy and incompetent as the rest of the HG staff.  Their lawyers are only capable because they don't work for Harmony Gold itself.

In HG's case, they'd hvae to be external. If they were anything like HG, their 3-piece suit would be made of paper and their law degree would probably be courtesy of Kellog' s Corn Flakes

 

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, pengbuzz said:

You're the webmaster for the Macross Mecha Manual? Wow...I had no clue!

An important distinction should be made that I am not the author of the Macross Mecha Manual... I handle research, book-hunting, and backend administration tasks so that its author, Mr March, doesn't need to worry about fiddly administrative trivia.  To sum it up with a pithy turn of phrase, it's Mr March's baby, I'm the babysitter.

 

1 minute ago, pengbuzz said:

In HG's case, they'd hvae to be external. If they were anything like HG, their 3-piece suit would be made of paper and their law degree would probably be courtesy of Kellog' s Corn Flakes

I have it on excellent authority that a lot of Harmony Gold's "legal" department is actually handled by legalzoom.com.  

It's only for lawsuits that they hire actual lawyers... presumably because they couldn't find someone with a law degree from Trump University, the Albert Merrill School, or another sham university.

[jenius]

For most companies, it makes WAY more sense to handle minor legal things with something like legalzoom (starting a new LLC for example) and to outsource the occasional lawsuit to a legal firm... of all HG's issues, outsourcing legal isn't one of them. What's next? Start criticizing them for using ADP to process their payroll? (I have no idea if they do...)

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, jenius said:

of all HG's issues, outsourcing legal isn't one of them. What's next? Start criticizing them for using ADP to process their payroll? (I have no idea if they do...)

... so you missed the joke completely, then?  Nobody's criticizing them for outsourcing legal, the joke being that incompetence is so intrinsic to everything HG does that simply being competent makes the legal counsel they've retained stick out like a sore thumb.  

(You know, when people think of corporations lawyering up their mental image is of a professional corporate lawyer... even though those only really exist in the big corporations, not little fly-by-night outfits like HG.)

(Mind you, they seem to use legalzoom for things they really oughtn't, like processing cease and desists and using their free legal dictionary in an attempt to understand the terms of their own license... leading to cockups like their claim that having used MOSPEADA designs with permission in derivative works made them owners of the MOSPEADA designs, which earned them the ire of Tatsunoko in arbitration.)

Edited July 30, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

50 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

An important distinction should be made that I am not the author of the Macross Mecha Manual... I handle research, book-hunting, and backend administration tasks so that its author, Mr March, doesn't need to worry about fiddly administrative trivia.  To sum it up with a pithy turn of phrase, it's Mr March's baby, I'm the babysitter.

Gotcha...I kind of guessed that when you were mentioned in the third person in the acknowledgments.  Still impressive how many folks from here are involved there.

50 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I have it on excellent authority that a lot of Harmony Gold's "legal" department is actually handled by legalzoom.com.  

It's only for lawsuits that they hire actual lawyers... presumably because they couldn't find someone with a law degree from Trump University, the Albert Merrill School, or another sham university.

Ah, legalzoom. Providing quality legal advice since 1999.

ROFL

[pengbuzz]

49 minutes ago, jenius said:

For most companies, it makes WAY more sense to handle minor legal things with something like legalzoom (starting a new LLC for example) and to outsource the occasional lawsuit to a legal firm... of all HG's issues, outsourcing legal isn't one of them. What's next? Start criticizing them for using ADP to process their payroll? (I have no idea if they do...)

Wait...they actually pay people to work for them? From the sounds of it, I thought they simply caught them unawares out in public and chained them to a desk in their dungeon of an office with only some stale bread and rancid soup to sustain them.

Edited July 30, 2019 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Ah, legalzoom. Providing quality legal advice since 1999.

It's... adequate... for basic stuff like living wills, standard forms of contract, etc. but for the complex stuff there's often no reasonable substitute for an actual lawyer.

Harmony Gold could've avoided a LOT of problems over the Robotech franchise's history if they'd bothered to get proper legal advice from a qualified legal expert instead of relying on the legal equivalent of crib notes.

 

4 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Wait...they actually pay people to work for them? From the sounds of it, I thought they simply caught them unawares out in public and chained them to a desk in their dungeon of an office with only some stale bread and rancid soup to sustain them.

Not very well, but they do pay them... which is why the franchise's attempt to reinvent itself as a credible anime property was stillborn.  They weren't willing to spend the kind of money necessary to retain the kind of talent pool you need to do something like that.  Instead, they hired fans who were willing to work for relatively paltry sums.  (Curiously, there are several fans who seem to envy this...)

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

No... there are still casual Robotech fans who don't know, and Robotech fans themselves constantly muddy the waters with the aforementioned constant efforts to "adopt" Macross sequel content into Robotech.

I get, as webmaster for the Macross Mecha Manual, 1-2 emails every month asking why the site doesn't cover Robotech-specific mecha like the "YF-1R" or the mecha of the Southern Cross and MOSPEADA shows.

*sigh*

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but hope springs eternal.

 

Good job setting them on the path to goodness and light(I assume).

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not very well, but they do pay them... which is why the franchise's attempt to reinvent itself as a credible anime property was stillborn.  They weren't willing to spend the kind of money necessary to retain the kind of talent pool you need to do something like that.  Instead, they hired fans who were willing to work for relatively paltry sums.  (Curiously, there are several fans who seem to envy this...)

Not like I expect the paycheck to be anything that wouldn't require you also working shifts at the local grocer to make ends meet, but doing that little work and coming away with a semi-livable salary doesn't actually sound like too terrible a thing.