My take on the situation is this:
- Scott Bizar / FGU owns the trademark for V&V. If you take nothing else from this, take that away.
- Scott Bizar / FGU is letting Dee/Herman/Monkeyhouse use the trademark for their own products.
- Monkeyhouse owns the copyright for the 1st Edition Rules, the 2nd Edition (1982) rules and the variant (version 2.1).
- FGU still has contracts to produce all the other books and the copyrights of the other writers still stand (Destroyers, FORCE, Doc Porky-hips, Devils Domain, Honor, Most Wanted, etc.). Can those authors going forward and write more content for either company? Sure. Just like before.
- The 25K that Monkeyhouse raised will probably go to paying off legal fees (for their lawyer) and legal penalties (for the defamation suit they lost to Bizar and penalties stacked against them in Florida).
- FGU is still producing books, and now I'd suspect Monkeyhouse will begin to increase production. If not, WTF was the point to the lawsuit?
So... who won? Well, this is a friendly post, so I will simply say that FGU won the trademark and Monkeyhouse got $25K, so I guess both sides have reason to be happy. As for the fans... perhaps having companies vying for V&V dollars is a good thing. My hope is that whatever comes out in the long run is competitive in this marketplace, and that the glory days are ahead of us.
That's my take on the situation. Although it does still leave a few questions remaining...
Anyway, now I'm just starting to
RAMBLE