Copyrights in the Villains and Vigilantes RPG rulebooks, including the 1979 and 1982 editions, the V&V adventure titles Crisis at Crusader Citadel and Most Wanted, Vol. 1, and materials published by Monkey House Games since 2010 are owned by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman’s Monkey House Games.
Fantasy Games Unlimited owner Scott Bizar is the owner of the V&V trademark, which is licensed to Monkey House Games for new RPG and comic products.
Superhuman Games has a license to produce the V&V Card Game (see "'Villains and Vigilantes Card Game'") under the V&V mark.
The litigation began in 2011, and the Federal District Court ruled in 2013. The Appeals Court ruled in 2015 (see "'V&V' Creators Win Copyright on Appeal"), and later last year a trial date in 2016 was set to resolve remaining issues. Those included the amount of damages Bizar owed Monkey House for V&V products he’d sold, the question of who owned the trademark, and whether damages were owed as a result (see "Date Set for 'Villains & Vigilantes' Trial"). Dee and Herman had been determined to be the copyright holders for the RPG, and Bizar had been awarded $52,300 for defamation and commercial disparagement.
Dee and Herman were raising money to fund the litigation on GoFundMe, which eventually totaled $26,880.
All of that came to an end, though, with this settlement, which was reached on January 11 in Phoenix. Other than the current IP ownership situation, no further details of the settlement were disclosed.
