It would be *nice* of Fun Pub to let those of us who entered the lottery know if the lottery is still happening or not. I really wish they would communicate with their members more about this. They could learn quite a bit from MattyCollector, who at least address fan/members/subscriber concerns.

 

If someone claimed that Hasbro could release G1 Jetfire, I must have missed it, because I agree with you.

ALL this is likely to pertain to is the deco as used on the SDCC set.

 

I've seen a few folks talk about the club selling these sets as if this was to the exclusion of HTS doing so. I don't think that was ever the case. TCC was simply to be another venue (one that might actually ship overseas, whereas HTS doesn't). TCC getting these had nothing to do with the suit. In fact, TCC had to stop their plans when the suit happened, same as HTS. None of this nonsense has anything to do with TCC.

Likewise, a lot of folks seem to assume that Hasbro paid HG some "small" amount of money to shut them up. We don't know that Hasbro paid HG one red cent. As previously established in this thread, this kind of "dismissed with prejudice" ruling often happens when there was considered to be "misconduct" on the part of the plaintiff. While I don't mean to say Hasbro didn't give HG any money (like I said, we don't know), it may well be that the lawyers presented a case strong enough that HG gave up without a fight, knowing that they'd not only lose, but likely lose a LOT of money in the attempt.

 

My perspective of the -out of court settlement-


Hasbro tosses a balled up dollar bill with George Washington's head folded up like a penis at Harmony Gold.

"Here. go buy yourself some class. or make something new."

 

To be fair, the news that the suit has been dismissed has only JUST been made public. While the dates on those documents are late September, we don't know when/if TCC was told anything, or if they found out the same time we did (we know Hasbro is not always quick to get back to them about stuff). They may only now be able to start thinking about those sets again, let alone how to handle them.

 

I kind of wish it would have went to court. HG would have in all likelyhood lost everything, and Hasbro would then probably obtain rights to Robotech

 

I agree about the time, but as for the money, doesn't Hasbro just pay a set fee to have lawyers on retainer (or have a legal department), or would they have to pay more when cases go to court?

 

It would have been more fun to see Harmony Gold annihilated in court, but at least this will shut them up.

For the sake of my amusement, though, I'm just going to continue imagining the "settlement" was Hasbro slapping Harmony Gold across the face (if Hasbro and Harmony Gold were people, which they totally are).

 

Yamato Toys owns the copyright for Macross.

When I worked for Toycom almost 10 years ago (Yamato's US-based manufacturer aka Yamato Toys USA now), Harmony Gold gave us a bunch of legal headaches because Yamato wanted to sell it's Macross line in the US.

 

Yes, but Fun Publications seriously needs to improve communications and they could have at least informed us that the lottery was on hold until further notice or if it is not happening at all.

 

Harmony Gold brings new meaning to the term- corporate welfare. Talk about mooching off....

 

The problem with going to court is that like poker, once very so often, you get dealt a very, very unlucky hand: a doofus jury, an unsympathetic judge, surprise technicalities. Better to just throw money at it and make it go away.

Look at apple: instead of settling for pennies like the other publishers who got sued for price fixing ebooks with apple, it decided to go ahead to trial. They lost and now they got slapped with all sorts of injuctions.

You should see the patent trolls in the tech world. Makes Harmony Gold look like Mother Teresa.

 

Or copyright trolls (the ones who sue 1,000+ John Does at once). I can't even begin to describe my frustration with dealing with them and I've had to defend several clients from them.

And yes, the above is largely correct - Hasbro likely has an in-house counsel but the likelyhood is that weiging their options the practicallity was the settlement posed less risk than the trial - it's just the practical side to law. It's not always pleasent (lord knows I've provided clients with advice they don't want to hear) because sometimes money and odds of recovery suggest you shouldn't fight for the justice you truly want.

 

Club probably as much in the dark as we are. They halted their lottery as this all happened. They probably have an agreement with HTS in place, it's likely they have to wait for this to all get sorted out.

 

I personally have hopes that Hasbro ended it be paying Harmony Gold for the license the mold and will reissue G1 Jetfire because of it. A guy can dream can't he?

Nothing ends a legal suit like becoming business partners!

 

I don't see why people here seem deluded that Hasbro won. When you settle out of court it generally means the defendant did enough to make the plaintif happy.

Hasbro probably paid a fine or bought a license, or whatever, and made HG happy. HG got paid off. They didn't loose.

 

While I don't suggest Hasbro "won," per se, I do think that the Wikipedia entry, when it suggests "In general, an action taken with prejudice indicates misconduct on the part of the party who filed the claim and forbids that party from refiling the case," does give more than a little reason to suggest that the settlement might have come about for reasons other than "Hasbro paid HG off."

Can I prove it? Of course not. I'm fully aware that a defendant might want a settlement to be done "with prejudice," as well, simply insofar as they want the case to "go away," and if that means giving some money to the plaintiff... fine.

But the point is, we don't know either way, and likely will never know, and I'd rather not have rumors spread one way or the other.

Because you know how this fandom works. People are going to go around claiming "Hasbro won!" and "Hasbro paid HG off" in equally loud numbers, each being convinced that their version is true. If I can encourage just a few of those to exercise a bit more humility in their opinion-spreading, I'm happy.

 

The only question I'm concerned with at this point is "what will happen to the remaining Jetfire/Skystriker stock?"

I'm sure Hasbro has some and at one point the club was planning a lottery. Hopefully those all didn't get cashed in on eBay.

 

Glad to see things were settled out in court. I was getting worried.

 

So where's Enterlaw on this?