"We don't have the rights to a song" feels like can be traced back to a handful of people versus "people looked into the tent and saw a dustbowl carnival".
Oh, definitely. But there is also the complication of upper-level management across departments having some visibility of what’s happening in other departments (internal and external to A&D), and rumors running through chains that have absolutely nothing with what’s happening.
It happens in the military all the time. Basically, if you discuss something in a room with more than three people in it, it becomes almost impossible to...
I misremembered the exact wording it seems, but this could still be a very similar situation of one department spreading something, other department hears key word and says it's this IP. For example, someone could say "oh we're getting an apocalypse house", that gets spread as "We're getting TLoU2!" or "We're getting Fallout!" and boom, you have a false rumor.