It should perhaps be stressed that this entire lawsuit wasn't really about the unseen.
On the face of it, the claims that are going to be dismissed with prejudice are (only) those that HG made in this lawsuit (see HG's Prayer for Relief, Docket #001).
To begin with, there are no unseen BattleMechs. There are only unseen mecha images. The names, stats and lore histories of the
Archer,
Warhammer,
Rifleman et al were created and owned by FASA; that was never in question. HBS, PGI and CGL could have included these 'Mechs in their game all right. The one thing they probably (!) couldn't legally do is for them to look like Robotech mecha.
Now HG alleged that the defendants all have made commercial use of certain Robotech mecha, and therefore defendants should be forbidden from infringing on HG's copyright and pay monetary damages to HG.
As it turned out, HG may not be in a legal position to enforce these claims, and have settled. The only known concessions the defendants made in the settlement is that they waived their potential recoup of lawyer fees and costs. HG technically achieved zero percent of their goals in the lawsuit.
I know that speculation is discouraged, but I think it's okay to voice the following thoughts:
- Although nothing was actually decided in court, the decidedly downhill course this lawsuit apparently took for HG will be remembered. I fully expect that HG will not bring a BattleTech producer (IP owner or licensee) to court ever again now over HG's alleged rights to any unseen BattleTech art. For HG this means the repercussions extend well beyond the initial scope of the lawsuit at hand.
- The BattleTech franchise mounted a successful defense. But they didn't gain (or even go for) any rights they didn't have beforehand. Specifically, they still don't have any rights to the unseen images they they didn't have before. Those rights remain with Big West, Studio Nue, and/or Tatsunoko. Whoever holds the rights can still deny the unseen art to BattleTech if they wish. As for HG, we don't know (and the court never decided) if HG cannot, or merely do not want to, deny those rights to BattleTech. Following the settlement, it's a moot point.
- The lawsuit never go to the point where anyone had to consider if it had any merit. As a fan community we'll laugh at HG's comparisons for a long time to come, but from a legal standpoint we still don't know how far the envelope can be pushed. (Ye olde FASA vs. Playmates lawsuit suggests that even minor differences suffice for a mecha design to be judged sufficiently different to not infringe on copyright. By that standard, PGI,HBS and IMR should be good with a wide safety margin.)
- The settlement agreement is confidential, so we'll never learn what it entails. Given that PGI was apparently in a much stronger position, I can easily imagine that HG simply cut their losses and thereby incidentially also the losses (in costs and lawyer fees) for PGI, which made the settlement attractive for both parties. But, being a private agreement, they could have agreed on almost anything. It remains to be seen if PGI, HBS and CGL will roll out classic 'Mechs with updated art. I certainly hope so.
