It seems that Piranha Games and Smith & Tinker have quickly run into some trouble with their quest to create, find a publisher and then release a new MechWarrior game, the fifth in the series that enjoyed great success in the 90’s. Harmony God, a company that is involved in the North American distribution of a line of Mecha toys, is apparently sending down legal notices to all the sites that are hosting the trailer for
MechWarrior 5, demanding that it be pulled down because it is infringing on its trademark.
Harmony Gold is saying that the red robot that can be seen in the trailer, the one with the apparently long PPC on one hand, is a rip off of the Tomahawk Drestoid from the Macross line of Mecha, which is also available in the United States. The problem is compounded by the fact that BattleTech has been accused of using robot models made by someone else before. Way back in 1996, Harmony Gold and the company met in court and the decision was taken that MechWarrior would only be used originally from then on.
Previously, the games had borrowed elements from a variety of other franchises. When
Smith & Tinker were contacted by IGN, they said that, “We have no comment on the situation at this time.” Given that it's just a model used in a trailer, they should reach an agreement rather quickly, without the development on the title being affected. But both Smith & Tinker and Piranha need to make sure that they don't stray into other people's intellectual properties when putting together the new MechWarrior.
After all, it's not as if Mech combat videogames are dominating the market and they have a lot of sources to take content from. Fans would be pretty annoyed if legal trouble was the downfall of the MechWarrior project.
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