On 24 June 2009, Catalyst Game Labs announced that they had secured the rights to the "unseen" as a result, art depicting the original 'Mechs absent from publications for over a decade, can be legally used again. Catalyst Game Labs has continued this practice. When Fantasy Productions licensed the property, these "Unseen" images were expanded to include all art produced "out-of-house" – that is, whose copyrights resided with the creators, not the company. The BattleMechs taken from the various anime sources were then considered "Unseen". After realizing how the use of licensed images made them vulnerable to lawsuits and afraid that such a suit would bankrupt the company, FASA made the decision to only use images owned by them and them alone. Bills explained that FASA had sued Playmates over the use of images owned by FASA, but received no compensation, even though Playmates was ordered to stop using the images in question.
Under license from them, the Classic BattleTech line developer for Fantasy Productions, Randall N.
No official broke the silence until 2007, after FASA had sold the BattleTech intellectual property to WizKids Games. In later years FASA abandoned these images, and it was common speculation by fans that the decision was the result of a lawsuit brought against them by Playmates and Harmony Gold over the use of said images. The visual design of the original line of BattleMechs were taken from Macross and other anime, including many signature images. The name of the game was changed to BattleTech in the second edition because George Lucas and Lucasfilm claimed the rights to the term " droid" the machines themselves were renamed BattleMechs from the second edition onwards. Further information: List of BattleTech gamesĬhicago-based FASA Corporation's original 1984 game focused on enormous robotic, semi-humanoid battle machines called BattleDroids.