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NEWS: Judge Orders Hold on U.S. Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime License


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Sunday Silence



Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:45 pm Reply with quote
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 7:08 pm Reply with quote
Wait, so the legal copyright owners (in Japan) are now legally not allowed to do anything with their product in the US for an unspecified amount of time now? I'm not familiar with copyright law but is this sort of decision normal?
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Reibooi



Joined: 03 Mar 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 7:15 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:
Wait, so the legal copyright owners (in Japan) are now legally not allowed to do anything with their product in the US for an unspecified amount of time now? I'm not familiar with copyright law but is this sort of decision normal?


I don't know if it's normal or not or proper to do or not but all I can think is that it's BS. I mean almost everyone kinda agrees that 4Kids did something wrong(people vary on how wrong they think what they did was) so why do the Japanese companies have to pay for that now? I don't think it makes much sense but I also know absolutely nothing about stuff like this.
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Kit-Tsukasa



Joined: 16 Mar 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 7:25 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:
Wait, so the legal copyright owners (in Japan) are now legally not allowed to do anything with their product in the US for an unspecified amount of time now? I'm not familiar with copyright law but is this sort of decision normal?

To be honest, this is starting to sound like the Harmony Gold/Macross incident. This is also similar to the Miyazaki/Ghibli/Disney censorship issue. The latter of course was eventually resolved and Ghibli/Miyazaki continued to release stuff in the US.

tl;dr This is the kind of crap that prevents Japanese anime from freely coming over to the US.
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silentjay



Joined: 12 Dec 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:00 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:
Wait, so the legal copyright owners (in Japan) are now legally not allowed to do anything with their product in the US for an unspecified amount of time now? I'm not familiar with copyright law but is this sort of decision normal?


While people automatically want to come down on 4Kids, it's not cut & dried, and they might not actually be in violation of the contract. The unspecified time is however long it takes for the court to decide whether or not there was a contract violation.

ADK shopping the franchise around while this is in court is a pretty big show of bad faith, and shows a fair amount of contempt. I mean, seriously, they're in court over a licensing contract and are shopping said license to new perspective buyers at the same time. It's no surprise that the judge went for an injunction.

{Edit: No clue where I got AMS from.)


Last edited by silentjay on Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:10 pm; edited 2 times in total
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siradix



Joined: 19 Aug 2009
Posts: 62
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:00 pm Reply with quote
Doesn't surprise me that 4Kids wants to make sure no one will be able to snatch up the rights while their business is going down the tubes. I'm interested in the response they are going to give on the 10th.

Last edited by siradix on Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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cohenmarioman



Joined: 02 May 2010
Posts: 102
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:02 pm Reply with quote
NAS lawyers suck balls. Seriously, either that or they had not adjusted to the American system yet and got fluked by better practice.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:16 pm Reply with quote
Kit-Tsukasa wrote:
To be honest, this is starting to sound like the Harmony Gold/Macross incident. This is also similar to the Miyazaki/Ghibli/Disney censorship issue. The latter of course was eventually resolved and Ghibli/Miyazaki continued to release stuff in the US.


Uhhh what? There was no Miyazaki/Ghibli/Disney censorship issue (they're contractually not allowed to edit anything, and haven't been from the beginning -- no issues there at all). There wasn't really a Harmony Gold/Macross "incident" specifically, either, though there are a few legal issues there that have absolutely no similarity to this at all.

This is very expected. Any judge is going to want to hear testimony and see evidence as to whether TV Tokyo and NAS can pull their license, and will prohibit them from reselling it in the mean time. It's just common sense.

There is no decision made here, just a judge saying "OK guys, hold everything. Here's a schedule, we'll figure this out like grown-ups."
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LilyChan



Joined: 16 Jul 2004
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Location: Arizona
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:34 pm Reply with quote
Oh my. Looks like the plot's thickening (again)! I was just wondering about what happened with this.
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jmaeshawn



Joined: 08 Feb 2011
Posts: 169
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:39 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
the trial on the franchise's licensing will proceed in two phases: the first will determine whether TV Tokyo and NAS' announced cancellation of 4Kids' license was valid, and the second will determine whether 4Kids owes the owners money and exactly how much.


Why do they need to hold two trials for this?

If 4Kids owes them money, TV Tokyo and NAS announcing the license's cancellation was valid because 4Kids broke the license agreement.

Just solve everything in one go, and move along...


Last edited by jmaeshawn on Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
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dizzon



Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 338
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:41 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, hardly a surprise. What judge would allow the license to change hands before there was ever a ruling on whether or not it could be legally pulled from the current holder in the first place.

You can't put the cart before the horse.
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Primus



Joined: 01 Mar 2006
Posts: 2758
Location: Toronto
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:02 pm Reply with quote
ITT: People will not realize that NAS and TV Tokyo were attempting to sell Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal to another company while 4Kids' exclusive rights to the franchise had not truly been removed. There's nothing surprising in this decision, unless you're a zealot who just wants to see 4Kids burn for actions that may (or may not) have occurred.
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bglassbrook



Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 1243
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:10 pm Reply with quote
silentjay wrote:
wandering-dreamer wrote:
Wait, so the legal copyright owners (in Japan) are now legally not allowed to do anything with their product in the US for an unspecified amount of time now? I'm not familiar with copyright law but is this sort of decision normal?

While people automatically want to come down on 4Kids, it's not cut & dried, and they might not actually be in violation of the contract. The unspecified time is however long it takes for the court to decide whether or not there was a contract violation.

ADK shopping the franchise around while this is in court is a pretty big show of bad faith, and shows a fair amount of contempt. I mean, seriously, they're in court over a licensing contract and are shopping said license to new perspective buyers at the same time. It's no surprise that the judge went for an injunction.

Right. Besides, it's not like you [w-d] were complaining that the owner couldn't do anything in the US with the property before there was a dispute. All this is doing is saying the contract still exists until everybody is sure it doesn't, which ought to make any potential buyer ecstatic to have this dealt with on someone else's dime.
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Melanchthon



Joined: 02 Oct 2010
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:49 pm Reply with quote
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ABetterTimeandPlace



Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Posts: 101
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 9:58 pm Reply with quote
jsevakis wrote:
There wasn't really a Harmony Gold/Macross "incident" specifically, either, though there are a few legal issues there that have absolutely no similarity to this at all.


While their similarities are debatable, there are several Harmony Gold/Macross incidents, as demonstrated by Harmony Gold's attempts to block the import of Japanese Macross Plus merchandise and Macross games.
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