Bethesda Claims Interplay Wants to "Undermine" Fallout

[OakTable]

I swear to fucking God, Bethesda and it's lawyers are the most retarded pack of cunts I've ever seen. So you're telling me that Bethesda believes that Interplay should not use anything Fallout-related in order to make a Fallout MMO that could make them some more money? And some of you guys are defending them? God, I hate Interplay too for ruining Fallout by releasing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, but this is just fucking unfair.

 

[INeedAName]

1: They rettained the right to make a Fallout MMO, but Bethesda bought the fallout universe, copyrighted material, story, characters etc. this means Interplay can create a Fallout MMO set in the fallout universe, but by the dictations and guidelines set by Bethesda, who owns the rights and content of that universe.
3er section 2.3 of the Trademark Licensing Agreement, a condition on Interplay's part was to have ?secured financing,? to develop a Fallout MMO.

1. And yet they can't very well create a Fallout game without using any of the copyrighted material. What guidelines and dictations did Bethesda set forth for use of their content, after all? Bethesda must have set out the terms of what aspects of the franchise Interplay could and could not have access to or else they have very poor attorneys. As an example, Nintendo licenses out its content and characters all of the time to third party developers and yet a final product is still able to come to fruition because they set out the terms from the beginning of what is an allowable use of Mario, Samus, etc. This is why I think a judge will ultimately side with Interplay over most aspects of their use of the content - they can't exercise their right without making a reasonable use of the IP.
3. You are very fortunate to have access to the original agreement. Still, you realize that constant legal challenges and court costs have a way of diverting dedicated dollars that would otherwise be used for development? There is no question that Bethesda has deeper pockets (which seems to be the deciding factor in a legal test of endurance), but "secured financing" is a moving target (any attorney, especially Bethesda's, could pick up on that) and Interplay has already met the legal burden of proving sufficient progress on the MMO.

1:Indeed, but wouldn't it have been reasonable for Interplay to negotiate with Bethesda about the use of their (Bethesda's) IP? It would have been easy for Interplay, assuming they had followed the original agreement in the first place, to put up a framwork with Bethesda about how the IP should be handled in Fallout Online. Bethesda, considering Fallout: New Vegas, obviously has no objections to another developer taking use of the Fallout franchise per se. The problem with what Interplay is doing though is that, unlike Obsidian, Interplay is working against Bethesda, not with Bethesda.

2: Of course Bethesda is making this a test of endurance. That's probably the easiest way for them to win this case. Of course there were specifics about what is meant by 'secured financing' in the agreement. For example, Interplay whould have held $30,000,000 in a bank account as of the April 4, 2009. Naturally, both Bethesda and Interplay do legal acrobatics around both this and many other finacial issues. I was simply clarifying the fact that Interplay doesn't have the right to develop a Fallout MMO no matter their financial state, but there are certain conditions set on Interplay.

 

[archabaddon]

Have you seen Parks and Recreation?

Never seen it.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

I'm not even sure how this is still going.

Interplay sold the IP to Bethesda when they killed the series by milking it too hard, so they threw the series at whoever was buying.

Now that Bethesda succeeded at making it commercially viable again, Interplay want back in?

Fuck off, Interplay. You sold it, it is theirs now.

Unless there is something that I've missed somewhere.