Oregon-based ResponDesign, a company that published a fitness training game a few years ago on Xbox, PS2 and PC called Yourself!Fitness, has provided GameDaily BIZ with a copy of its lawsuit against Ubisoft. The suit filed on July 16 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, indicates that ResponDesign had reached a license agreement with Ubisoft for the French publisher to use the game's assets, including the personal trainer Maya, to develop and publish its own fitness game called My Fitness Coach for Wii and PS2. ResponDesign claims that both parties agreed to target a release date of early 2008 to coincide with the launch of Nintendo's Wii Fit.

ResponDesign is furious that it's lost millions in potential royalties from the still unpublished game. The company also said that Ubisoft "never disclosed that it was developing a game that would be entitled My Weight Loss Coach or any other game in the My Coach product line that would directly compete with or replace the My Fitness Coach game."

According to the agreement, Ubisoft was to pay ResponDesign $250,000 upon reception and approval of the game elements, $50,000 upon completion of the first playable version of the Wii game (no later than Nov. 18, 2007), and another $50,000 upon approval by Nintendo of the gold master for the finished product. Furthermore, ResponDesign was to receive "bonuses" if the game's sales reached certain benchmarks. Bonuses for a Wii edition and PS2 edition were to be $250,000 and $150,000, respectively.

The bulk of the compensation was to have come from royalties, though. Ubisoft apparently agreed to pay 5% of net sales for My Fitness Coach if the game sold more than 500,000 units within the first 18 months. And if the game sold over 1 million units, ResponDesign was to receive a royalty of 10%.

Ultimately, ResponDesign says that Ubisoft "from the outset failed to diligently pursue development of the game, ignored the terms of the license agreement and acted in bad faith." After a while Ubisoft told ResponDesign that the game wouldn't be ready until first quarter of 2009 and the publisher also complained of missing assets. Ubisoft also told ResponDesign in July that it would be changing the name of the game to Yourself!Fitness in the U.S. and Go Fitness in Europe; it was no longer in the "My Coach" line. As of the filing of the suit, Ubisoft has not done any marketing or PR surrounding the game.

Bottom line: ResponDesign is suing for breach of license agreement and continued damages, which the company believes adds up to at least $26 million.

GameDaily BIZ has contacted Ubisoft for comment and we'll update if they provide a statement.