Why Battletech Has a Unicorn In It (Lord Have Mercy on Our Souls)

Holy shit, I haven't heard much from you in a long while. This is Cedric the Clydesdale from way back.

Since I am still getting complaints that I haven't "addressed serious concerns", I've decided to go ahead and address several of them. "THIS IS JUST FAN FICTION!" - not according to FASA or WizKids. In the mid-'90s, I was solicited to write and submit an Eridani Light Horse Scenario Pack, modeled on the pre-existing "McCarron's Armored Cavalry" pack, by none other than Sam Lewis - then Vice-President of FASA Corporation. I did so. FASA and I entered into a development agreement and began working on the project. Due to FASA's internal disorganization issues - at one point they even owed Mike Stackpole six figures in "misplaced" royalties - the ELH Scenario Pack ended up in Development Hell. It was eventually dropped after three years of lackadaisical management, on grounds that it was "no longer timely". The terms of the development agreement were that if I didn't get cut a contract for my work, I owned all the original content I'd created. It even said I could "rework for sale to other companies". So I put the ELH History section up on my personal Battletech fansite, slapped a copyright notice on it, and put it behind me - until, as noted below, it was swiped by ClassicBattleTech dot com and posted as part of the site's official canon Battletech timeline. When WizKids was caught, their reaction was not to disown the work, but to ask permission for its continued inclusion with full accreditation. When I provided the newer 14-page version, they swapped it in and accredited me for that as well. So yes, the Eridani Light Horse Scenario Pack, and its History section, were creatures of corporate oversight and approval from Day One... the very antithesis of "fan fiction". "CLASSICBATTLETECH DOT COM WAS A FAN SITE!" - not according to Topps. Topps asserted before the 9th Circuit Court that when I submitted my work to CBT, WizKids obtained ownership under the site's "unsolicited works" clause. Which, right off the bat, was a repudiation of CBT being other than a WizKids-owned site. These same Terms also very clearly stated, "this website owned and operated by WizKids LLC and its affiliates". None of these "affiliates" were mentioned by name, and none had any authority or ownership EXCEPT as WizKids' affiliates. Everyone who operated the site did so on behalf of the company... not as independent fans. So what about Topps' "unsolicited works" claim? It fell apart thanks largely to CBT site operator Jason Knight, who submitted a statement asserting that my work had been "copypasta'd" from my own website to ClassicBattleTech dot com. That's not me sending in "unsolicited work" - that's the company plagiarizing my work. Knight also admitted that on discovering the theft, I had contacted the site and worked out a proper legal publication AFTER being asked by the site owners to continue its use. They got to use that version of the Eridani Light Horse History (seven pages) until I provided a polished and more extensive version (fourteen pages). This is why the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asserts that I've made multiple contributions to Battletech, and I have Jason Knight to thank for corroborating that as well as many other details of my original filing. "YOU GOT THE ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE DESTROYED!" - how, exactly, would that even work? Battletech has a long and storied history of using unrelated third-party content and getting into trouble when the copyright owners of that content - such as the logo for "Wylie's Coyotes" being the actual image of Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote - take umbrage. Here, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asserted that I made contributions to the Battletech property - where is the copyright conflict? Well, the "conflict" is that Topps didn't want anyone else to have any claim to copyrights in Battletech. Problem there is that "destroying the Eridani Light Horse" does nothing to affect my rights or contributions at all. It is merely a new set of contributions. The ELH didn't stop having a version of their History which I had written, any more than they stopped having a version written by Randall Bills. It's all still part of the overall Battletech property. At the same time, one has to wonder what FASA or FanPro or WizKids thought they were accomplishing by destroying units such as Wylie's Coyotes. All they actually needed to do was ditch the illegal unit logo and (depending on the unit, such as with "The Fighting Urukhai") maybe change the name. NOT changing the name or logo simply means that when they created new content in order to declare these units destroyed, they were violating the rights of the copyright holders AGAIN. I have to assume that maybe there was some behind-the-scenes deal where Warner Brothers, the Tolkien Estate, and the rest all said they wouldn't sue if the offending units were destroyed and never used again. But that wouldn't affect my situation at all. Quite the opposite: the way the 9th Circuit court case worked out, Topps and I don't co-own our respective Battletech content. If it came out that they actually DID eradicate the ELH expressly to "eliminate" my contributions, their USE of my contributions without permission would be a copyright infringement. It also wouldn't actually eradicate my contributions. What would be the point? More importantly than any of that, however, is the simple fact that this whole argument relies on myself, WizKids and Topps all having access to time travel. The Dark Age line released its first product in August 2002. WizKids swiped and published my ELH History in early 2001 - and I'd written it in the mid-'90s. Zero connection. Nor did the second version touch on Dark Age either, being written and published in August 2001. The simple fact is that Word of Blake was out to destroy the Star League, the ELH were a premiere Star League unit, so boomdy-boom-boom. I doubt any of this is really going to change the minds of the people who forwarded these arguments to begin with. Most of the people whose comments I deleted subsequently declared "we're just asking questions", but not one of them asked a question. They said they wanted to have a debate, but "don't watch this video" is not a debate. I really don't have patience for dishonest and dishonorable folks, so no, none of this is for them. All of this is here simply because someone asked me to tell them the tale and I did.

do you know where I can find the art work in the back ground

Sorry for not trimming it better; the real start to the story kicks off about @5:25. EDIT: No one bothers to check before screeching... link to the ELH History, including WizKids' accreditation, at bottom. It's cute, though, that all these years later we have people who think ClassicBattletech dot com was a fan site. In that case, Topps committed perjury when they claimed its Terms and Conditions were legal - including "this website owned and operated by WizKids LLC and its affiliates". And so did Jason Knight when he asserted these terms came from WizKids. Regardless, these folks are free to yell at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for stating that my works were "contributions" (their word) to the Battletech property. That they don't like the decision of the court is not my concern. web.archive.org/web/20030220140010/http://www.clas…