It cannot be understated how legally fucked Battletech is.
Battletech is broken into seven pieces, each sealed in a separate dungeon, guarded by a monstrous keeper who does not sleep.
Catalyst Game Labs has the rights to publish "classic" Battletech books, including the older game books and (most of) the fiction.
CGL can also publish new books and art based on same, and can license tchotchkes, as long as they don't run afoul of the other IP rights.
CGL owns the copyrights on all of the printed work but licenses all of the trademarks and a great deal of art from Topps.
Topps owns most of the trademarks, a difficult-to-determine amount of the art, and retains the rights for plastic toys and figures.
Topps licenses rights to sell plastic figures to CGL, but only for an introductory box set.
The rights to make METAL figures, on the other hand, are owned by Iron Wind Metals.
They also own copyrights on most of the sculpts.
CGL licenses sculpts from IWM, although recently CGL has commissioned new sculpts and licensed those TO IWM.
Rick Raisley owns exclusive rights to make software aids for Battletech, although he doesn't get litigious about free competitors.
Battletech computer game rights, as well as the Mechwarrior trademark and an indeterminate amount of BT art - are owned by Microsoft.
Microsoft licenses various other game makers, Piranha Games (PGI) and Harebrained Games (HBS), to make games on specific platforms.
These companies can't make ports or licensed crap without licensing more rights from the other rightsholders, so they don't.
This is just the straightforward, undisputed parts. There are two big legal disputes with Battletech. One well-known, one not so much.
Waaaaay back in the day, BT's creators licensed mecha designs from several Japanese artists - or so they thought.
What they actually did was license those rights from an American toy company that did not have the right to sublicense them.
These designs are mechs the Phoenix Hawk, Marauder, and Warhammer in Battletech.
They're all over the place in older BT books and games.
Harmony Gold did license the rights to these designs, and came into conflict when FASA, BT's creators, licensed Battletech toys.
The conflict escalated when a Harmony Gold sublicensor solicited a toy that was obviously derivative of an original Battletech design.
The solicited (but never produced) toy in question:
This landed in court, and FASA did such a bad job of making their case that they not only lost, but appeared to be acting in bad faith.
So FASA excised all mention of the license anime designs, now called "unseen", from revised and future rule books.
The terms of the agreement between FASA and Harmony Gold were confidential, however.
Apparently FASA agreed to never use the designs that Harmony Gold then held the rights to ever again.
This contract outlived HG's (now-expired) licensing agreement with the owners of Macross, and thus their copyright claim.
This is why later companies PGI and CGL announced they'd use the "unseen" when HG's licensing agreement ended, then quietly backtracked
PGI's initial trailer for what would become Mechwarrior Online used the original Warhammer design, for example.
Harmony Gold doesn't have a COPYRIGHT claim, though, just this contract, so obviously derivative but still different designs are AOK!
Which is why "unseen" designs, redrawn by new artists, show up in recent BT/MW games.
The first is by Alex "flyingdebris" Iglesias from Mechwarrior Online, the second is a CGL book cover by Anthony "Shimmeringsword" Scroggins.
There's another major IP problem with Battletech, and this one does involve art theft, not good faith licensing problems.
All of the publishers of BT fiction have been extremely bad about paying authors royalties. Or at all.
It constantly turns out that a successor company doesn't ACTUALLY have the rights because the previous company didn't pay the author.
This leads to situations Roy Calbeck, the Fallout Equestria guy, claiming he owns all of BT because they published his furry fanfic.
Or outright scams CGL not paying authors for ebooks because the contract specified paying when the book went into print.
Contracts that dated from the 90s. (CGL got sued over this and lost.)
So any time someone uses Battletech art or fiction, they may discover an angry freelancer who got stiffed and thus still holds the rights.
This leads to situations MWO's developer, PGI, redrawing the classic Clan logos because they couldn't figure out who made the originals
Battletech is a complete IP clusterfuck, to a completely unimaginable degree.
Oh, I forgot one additional little wrinkle, the Battletech grey market.
CGL, the publishers of tabletop Battletech, are bad at paying freelancers, and everyone else making BT games can't make licensed goods.
However, there is obviously a market for Battletech t-shirts, posters, etc.
There's a noticeable pattern of rightsholders smacking down copyright-violating tchotchkes while letting freelancers or contractors slide
So Shimmeringsword or NoGutsNoGalaxy (a crappy fansite that does paid PR for Mechwarrior Online) sell shirts, prints, etc in a low key way
So they're possessive of their own rights to their own art, despite the fact that it's legally encumbered by being fanart.
This is more than just fans grousing about stolen ideas. CGL gives fanartists freelance work. NGNG is run by contractors for PGI.
Not only do you have this labyrinth of life diving, you have sublicensors looking the other way on IP violations by their subsublicensors
Down the line, it gets difficult to tell who owns rights to a given illo or concept sketch. Even if there's a contract, it might be breached
The only reason Battletech continues to exist at all is because Topps and Microsoft are famously litigious but completely negligent.
That's why the two Battletech game pubs are, respectively, run by a guy who embezzled years of earnings, and the worst Lithtech devs ever.
Oh, some bonus litigious silliness, not specifically related to Battletech IP.
Loren L. Coleman is the owner of CGL, and reportedly embezzled a great deal of their earnings at a time when they were stiffing freelancers.
Loren Coleman is an unrelated, reputable author on cryptozoology and vocally does not appreciate being confused with him.
As I dig into this, I find I'm behind the times on this. While Microsoft owned the rights to Mechwarrior and PC games, now PGI does?
It's not clear if MS licensed them to Smith & Tinker then later sold them to PGI, or sold them to S&T who sold them to PGI
That's part of the challenge of all of this, parsing the euphemisms and press release speak and gossip and accusations
And I'm two years behind on what rights Iron Wind Metals holds, too. (Apparently they now own the rights they licensed.)
Battletech's IP is REALLY COMPLICATED.
But as one of the devs said:
