INeedAName said:
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.
3
er 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.