Bethesda ‘Confident’ It Will Defeat Interplay in Legal Battle
Publisher Bethesda Softworks is “confident” it “will prevail on our claims” against Interplay Entertainment, Pete Hines, Bethesda vice president of PR and marketing, told us Tuesday, four days after a Maryland U.S. District Court judge denied Bethesda’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Interplay. A reason for Judge Deborah Chasanow’s denial wasn’t stated in the order filed Friday. Bethesda was trying to stop Interplay from selling the games Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Fallout Brotherhood of Steel, and prevent Interplay from creating a Fallout massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) before a trial and final determination in a suit filed by Bethesda against Interplay in September. The trial is expected to start in 2010.
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Interplay “will continue to defend its rights and pursue its counter claims” against Bethesda, including claims for breach of contract and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, Interplay said in a filing with the SEC Monday.
Bethesda claimed in its original Sept. 8 suit that Interplay “permanently forfeited and terminated” any limited rights it had to the Fallout trademark. Interplay received limited rights as part of asset purchase and trademark license agreements signed by the companies April 4, 2007, Bethesda said. Bethesda claimed limited rights under the trademark license agreement were “automatically terminated” April 4, 2009, “due to Interplay’s failure to meet the financial and developmental pre-conditions that were required for Interplay to continue using” the Fallout trademark in its planned MMOG. After Bethesda released Fallout 3 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, it learned that Interplay was manufacturing, selling and distributing a bundled game collection called Fallout Trilogy without authorization, it said. The collection’s name was “confusingly similar” to Fallout 3, Bethesda claimed. Interplay ignored notices by Bethesda that Interplay breached its obligations, so Bethesda terminated the limited merchandising rights that Interplay had under the asset purchase agreement as of June 30, 2009, according to Bethesda. Interplay then manufactured and sold game collections called Fallout Collection and Saga Fallout, and signed licensing deals with third parties for Fallout games, all without authorization, Bethesda claimed.
Separately, Bethesda parent ZeniMax Media said it bought the publishing rights to first-person shooter Rage for an undisclosed sum. The game will be published by Bethesda, ZeniMax said. Electronic Arts “will not be involved in the sales and marketing of Rage,” as originally planned, ZeniMax said. “The ongoing development of Rage is unaffected by this development,” it said. EA also wouldn’t elaborate on the terms of the deal with ZeniMax. In July 2008, EA said it signed a deal with id Software, then independently owned, to publish Rage for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Macintosh under its EA Partners business. ZeniMax bought id in June.