Notes:

Now it started with Playmates looking at some of the BattleTech designs, looked at the Mad Cat and thought "yeah, we can go with that." After when this article hit, FASA noticed and sent a lawsuit towards Playmates. Harmony Gold, who happened to notice the lawsuit out of curiosity, looked at BattleTech and noticed that they were using some designs from Macross (with FASA were actually allowed to use, they actually licenced the designs from Studio NUE).

after which, Harmony Gold Counter-sued FASA stating said Macross designs were actually Robotech designs that they were stealing from them, and planned to use them in their upcoming cartoon.

Ever since, between 1996 and 2015, BattleTech, under fear of litigation, halted the use of the designs based off of mechs from anime (specifically designs from Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe).

It only wasn't till recently that in 2018, that one last lawsuit by Harmony Gold emerged, aimed at Catalyst Game Labs (they do the tabletop, currently), Harebrained Schemes (made the PC game "BattleTech"), and Piranha Games (Made MechWarrior Online and the upcoming MechWarrior 5), but ended up getting Dismissed with Prejudice, meaning Harmony Gold legally can't sue them again.

Yeah, it was the Toy Concept that caused so many issues with the franchise.