As some of you might be aware, Bethesda & Interplay have been in a long legal dispute surrounding the rights to the Fallout MMO that Interplay has been working on. 

When Interplay sold the rights to the Fallout licence to Bethesda, Interplay was in a rather poor financial shape, so the sale basically saved the company. Part of the deal was that Interplay would have the rights to creating an MMO based on the Fallout licence, and also that Interplay would retain the rights to sell the older Fallout games. When the Fallout MMO webpage first launched Bethesda started to take legal accounts against Interplay for using iconic Fallout images, like the Vault boy, and Nuka Cola. Interplay did of course claim that they had the rights to use those images, as it was a part of their deal with Bethesda, while Bethesda claims that all Interplay had the rights to was the name, Fallout. Also, Bethesda has claimed that while Interplay has the rights to sell the old fallout games (which they do, through GOG), they don't have the rights to use the box art (because that contains some of the iconic images). 

Now Interplay wants to take back the licence from Bethesda, claiming a lack of meeting of the minds.

It should be noted that Bethesda's case against Interplay has been shot down repeatedly in court. As Interplay is not in the best financial shape, some people that I've talked to believe that what Bethesda is trying to do is to force enough legal costs on Interplay for the company to go under.

More info can be found  here

Of course, it is hard to find an unbiased source, and I'm far from unbiased in this matter, I think Bethesda's legal department is acting in horrendous way. They might be shooting themselves in the foot here, if Bethesda looses the rights to Fallout, that might turn out to be very expensive for them, as they might have to pay royalties for  every sold copy of Fallout 3 & New Vegas. 

ugh i hate such things, those cases could badly harm such good game developers, Bethesda is by far the best dveloper out there

Bethesda's legal department has been rather trigger happy during the last few years, and as far as I know, they have not won a single case... I think one of the higher ups at Bethesda should tell their legal department to calm down and think things through before they do things like this, because not only does it generate a lot of bad will towards the company, but these court cases can't be cheap. I support Interplay in this case, the agreement was that they would be allowed to create a Fallout MMO, but what is a fallout MMO without

any Fallout artwork, locations, graphic representations, story lines, creatures, monsters, names, likenesses, behaviors, environments (e.g., vaults), universes, settings, legends, characters, character classes, character professions, packaging, advertisements, text and translations, and any and all Fallout proprietary characters, trademarks, copyrights and artwork ...

It is sad when legal departments try to make waves....it is like the tail trying to wag the dog. I hope things calm down, tho i am no fan of Fallout, we have enoough dystopia sad future visions, and I am all in favour of more happy uses of games....  but thanks for the post and the thread, i had not heard about this particular tussle.

This mightn't be such a bad thing. I like more Interplay games than I do Bethesda's, not that that means anything. I'm sure the brains behind games like Neuromancer, Wasteland and Star Trek: Judgment Rites are long gone by now. Although I must admit I liked the original Fallout more than the Bethesda's Fallout. If Bethesda made another Fallout I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in it, whereas if Interplay made it I would at least check it out.

Fallout's lead designer has joined Obsidian, and they already had some old interplay people there before he joined them. 

Three of the top talents from Interplay's Black Isle Studio formed Troika, which created several excellent RPGs before closing down. 

Which one/s joined Obsidian?

Cheers, Terry