It boils down to this. It was established in court that Big West owns Macross, its concepts, designs, derivatives, etc outright. Tatsunoko owns the international distribution & merch for the original Macross series internationally (outside of Japan). Tatsunoko tried to contest the ruling, and were shot down.
Harmony Gold applied for a copyright on the name "Macross" in the U.S., and attained it. They use this to try & blockade all attempts at licensing Macross series/products (despite not being included in what Tasunoko, and by proxy they have), on that contention alone.
To date, no one has wanted to spend the cash in court to tell them otherwise, which is a damn shame. My question, shouldn't our courts ackonwledge the ownership of the name/etc internationally by its rightfull owners?