Here's a bit of good news for Fallout fans looking forward to Interplay's MMOG: development still has the green light.
As reported earlier, Fallout property owner Bethesda was recently denied a preliminary injunction against Interplay which would have blocked the latter company from using the Fallout storyline, characters and other identifiable elements. The argument was that Bethesda never agreed to the use of actual Fallout assets, just the Fallout title itself.
But Interplay retaliated by basically saying "no, I don't think so," and told the courts that Bethesda knew about Interplay's use of the property rights since the beginning. Even more, Bethesda coincidentally tried to block development of Fallout Online just as the game was about to go into testing.
However long story short (because it's a long one), Bethesda submitted an appeal against that decision, but was denied once again by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Court documents obtained by Joystiq reveal that Bethesda tried to show that "the district court abused its discretion and misapplied the law in concluding that Bethesda failed to establish a likelihood of irreparable harm." Bethesda also claimed that Interplay's suspect financial stability was a potential source of said irreparable harm, but the court didn't buy it.
As Joystiq points out, the legal battle isn't over even though Interplay can continue development for the short term. The drawback in continuing on is that the game still requires "express permission" from Bethesda before it can be launched on the market. That said, the game may never appear unless the court is forced to change Bethesda's mind, or both parties reach some kind of middle ground... which at this point seems highly unlikely.
To read the court documents, head here.
id Software, if you please...
