Legal threats are being sent out to gaming websites as you read this, Harmony Gold demanding that they pull down the trailer for Mechwarrior 5. Why? It's a long story.

See, Mechwarrior (and its daddy, BattleTech) haven't always used original designs for their mech. They sometimes straight up stole them from existing series, particularly Japan's Macross, which in the US forms the first part of the Robotech trilogy.

So BattleTech and Harmony Gold - who hold the Robotech rights in the West - went to court in 1996. End result? BattleTech (and by extension Mechwarrior) ceased using mech designs lifted from Macross, and instead employed only mechs they had themselves designed.

Harmony Gold's complaint in this instance is that the Mechwarrior 5 trailer uses designs that they own the trademark to. Now, they may have a point - the red mech in the image above looks a little like the Tomahawk Destroid from Macross (pictured below). But only a little. Surely not enough to warrant legal action.

Anyway, at the moment, the only legal threats we know about are those made to IGN. There's no comment yet from Piranha Games, the team working on Mechwarrior 5, or from Harmony Gold, explaining just what their beef is, and whether they'd be happy with edits to the game or are out for blood.

We'll update when we hear more.

MechWarrior 5 Trouble Brewing? [IGN]

So at least you know they have experience with giant robots! Then again, it also means they have experience with making crummy games based on giant robots.

Though, let's give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. They only helped develop Revenge of the Fallen. And being a movie tie-in, it had a deadline to meet. Something they won't have to worry about with Mechwarrior, what with Battletech being 25 years old and all.

This new game is called simply MechWarrior, and will serve as a reboot of sorts for the franchise. You'll still be piloting mechs, but the developers reckon that current console technology will for the first time let you feel like you're really behind the sticks of a giant fighting robot.

They're also shooting for a "dynamic battlefield", and rather than feature a food chain of mechs, instead want to let players choose a style of mech and then upgrade that to suit their tastes as they progress through the game.

MechWarrior is coming to the PC and Xbox 360, with no details yet on either a publisher or a release timeframe.

To see the full debut trailer, click below. Looks like GRAW with giant robots. Which is a real good place to start.

Mechwarrior Revealed [IGN]