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In early April, Sony issued a new software update for the PlayStation 3 that eliminated the option to install an alternate operating system, like Linux, to the console. Now, a California man is suing Sony Computer Entertainment over the change. More »
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Mega-publisher Activision filed its counter-suit against two former top Modern Warfare game developers today, claiming that the pair purposely delayed Modern Warfare 3 and had designs to "steal the [Infinity Ward] studio." What does the other side have to say? More »
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A little more than a month after the two top men behind Modern Warfare 2 were fired by their publisher and sued because of it — that publisher, Activision, is suing back, the Los Angeles Times reported today. More »
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Activision is catching legal heat from band No Doubt over the group's appearance in the recently released Band Hero. No Doubt is suing Activision, seeking damages for turning the act into "virtual karaoke players." Sound familiar? More »
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Bethesda Softworks has filed suit against Interplay, the company it purchased rights to the Fallout franchise from in 2007, citing trademark infringement and attempting to terminate its right to make a Fallout-themed MMO. More »
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Someone at sue-happy company PalTalk just got paid. Microsoft has settled with the company that filed suit against the Xbox 360 maker over patent infringement claims related to Halo multiplayer. Make it rain, PalTalk! More »
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Virtual world patent holder Worlds.com filed suit against NCSoft in December, claiming its games, including City of Heroes and Guild Wars, were violating its patent for multiplayer virtual environments. And it won't stop there. More »
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New York based PalTalk Holdings filed suit against Microsoft over two years ago, claiming that the company violated two patents with its Xbox Live service, singling out the multiplayer infrastructure of its Halo games. More »
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Guitar manufacturer Gibson's grand plans to sue Activision over its Guitar Hero series have been dashed, as the District Court for the Central District of California has ruled against Gibson, denying its patent infringement claims. More »
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Rock Band developer Harmonix is turning the legal tables on Konami, slapping the publisher-developer with a lawsuit of its own. No, not for pain and suffering caused by Rock Revolution, but for patent infringement. More »
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Pentavision! Who's that? Why, the Korean developer of the DJ Max and DJ Max Portable series of rhythm games, of course! At issue was that Pentavision made a music game without Konami's permission. More »
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A federal judge has ruled in favor of Midway in a copyright infringement case over its 2004 game Psi-Ops. A California screenwriter sued the publisher last year, claiming Midway swiped elements from his movie script, also titled Psi-Ops. More »
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Ah, the Pig Pen, East Los Santos. I've blown many wads of cash there in my time, and left it about as fulfilled as I have any other strip club in real life. Speaking of unfulfillment and real life strip clubs, the PlayPen of East Los Angeles — notice any similiarities? — lost a federal appeal in a lawsuit against Rockstar Games, alleging the game infringed on its trademarks. More »
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Seems that someone at THQ — most likely someone in the legal department — thinks the box art for Activision's upcoming off-road racer SCORE International Baja 1000: The Official Game looks a teensy bit too much like the box art for Baja: Edge of Control. This may be due to that someone at THQ having properly functioning eyeballs. The two multi-platform racers are planned for release just a month apart — THQ's Baja effort shipped end of September — leading THQ to file suit. More »
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Gerald Willis, who composed the University of Nevada Las Vegas fight song "Win With the Rebels," has filed suit against Electronics Arts over the company's commercial use of his song in ten video games. The NCAA licensed titles under contention include NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, NCAA March Madness and NCAA Baseball series, spanning from 2005 to 2008. More »
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A suit brought by retired NFL players not only alleges they're due money for Electronic Arts' use of their likenesses and career stats, but also that their own union brokered a below-market deal as a favor to EA, helping it secure exclusive NFL rights for its Madden franchise. More »
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The rights of 'avatars' — more to the point, the people who control them and their virtual assets — is an interesting and murky part of legal issues, EULAs, and player-company relations. Court cases have been tried over 'illegal' seizing of assets, and with the amount of time (and money) that people pour into their online characters and assets, we can expect to see more and more real-world legal problems related to virtual issues. But are companies on the ball?: More »
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In the United Kingdom, Atari, Codemasters and three other game companies are going to court to demand GBP300 from 25,000 file-sharers, reports The Times of London. Apparently, file-sharing got really obnoxious recently — 691,000 downloads of Operation Flashpoint by Codemasters in one week alone. So the five have asked the court to demand internet service providers turn over information on all 25,000 accused of breaking the law. Those users will get notices inviting them to pay up or face prosecution, and the first 500 to ignore it get sued. More »
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You may recall that earlier in May, Nintendo was pinched to the tune of $21 million in a patent infringement suit brought by Texas-based Anascape. Upon further review, the play stands — a U.S. District Court judge denied Ninty's pretty-please to cut that $21 mil to a less lottoriffic number. So unless they want to take this up the ladder to a U.S. federal appeals court, they'll be cutting a check for that number. More »
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GTA IV is complete and in production; the trucks are set to begin shipments to retail. This is just one item of positive news that Take-Two's executives touted at their annual shareholder meeting. More »
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Take-Two is apparently the object of a class-action suit by one of its alleged shareholders who claims, basically, that the circumstances surrounding Take-Two's refusal to sell to Electronic Arts are so fiscally irresponsible it's criminal. More »
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NCsoft is stepping up the battle against IP theft, in this case targeting illegal servers in eastern Europe (concentrating on Greece and Russia). Last year, they successfully brought a suit against a Greek company who was profiting from the use of illegal Lineage II servers; they're continuing the global fight. Full release after the jump. More »
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It would appear that Harmonix isn't the only Activision partner who has is in a legal tiff with the publisher. More »
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Last year, CDC Games (China) and Mgame (Korea) got into a heated legal battle over the status of Yulgang in Mainland China: CDC sued Mgame for breach of contract, and Mgame said they dropped CDC since they weren't paying per the terms of that same contract. But, just as was predicted last November, the two companies have kissed and made up: More »
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My weekends these days aren't complete without a helping of the week's Chinese game company lawsuit goodness (hey, it beats grading papers), and it looks like - despite China-based CDC Games and Mgame tossing around heated legalese the past few weeks - the companies are primed to kiss and make up. The CEOs from both companies met in Seoul to sign an agreement to 'negotiate in good faith' to reach some sort of mutually agreeable resolution to the battle over popular MMORPG Yulgang. Just last week, CDC Games was still claiming breech of contract and Mgame was screeching about non-payment, but the tune has definitely changed: More »
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Well, the Chinese gaming world is certainly turning into a sue-happy place as of late: CDC Games, the same company that has launched an assault on piracy, is now suing South Korean-based MGame Corporation in both South Korea and Hong Kong. Earlier this week, CDC leveled charges at MGame of providing really crappy tech support for Yulgang, a popular MMORPG, and failing to back up CDC in their quest to end piracy; after filing those suits in Hong Kong, CDC moved on to South Korean courts, alleging MGame breached a contract and failed to provide financial data. While MGame hasn't commented on these charges, CDC notes that MGame has terminated their contract with the company, citing non-payment (oops): More »
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It was only a matter of time before Blizzard and Vivendi took up arms against the creator of WoW Glider, a program that basically turns your character into one of those annoying bots you see running about Felwood, getting all the essence of water so you can't make your damn Robe of the Archmagi (now obsolete and useless), and that is just what they've done, filing suit against MDY Industries and Michael Donnelly in Arizona this past Friday. Blizzard states that WoW Glider infringes their IP, allows cheating, encourages players to break the EULA and circumvents copyright protections. More »
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Holy shit! More »
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Hi Jack! Hey, nice lawsuit there, chuckles. But I didn't come here to gloat. More »
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Jesus Christ, game developers. What's the matter with you? You know, most of us gamers are just trying to keep our heads low as lawmakers and professional ambulance chasers do their damnedest to lay all of society's ills at our door. Yet what do you do? You go ahead and announce a game so rife with depraved acts of sex and violence that it's set to make Postal 2 look like Mickey's Magic Castle, featuring acts such as: More »
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Kotaku sister site Idolator reports that former Deee-Lite singer Lady Miss Kier (a.k.a. Kierin Kirby) just lost a lawsuit against Sega Japan alleging that Space Channel 5's character Ulala is ripping off the Lady's schtick. More »
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Robert Summa — erstwhile Joystiq journo, now bitter Destructoid blogger — contacted The Ant Commandos, the company who released that god-awful Shredder Guitar Hero controller and are currently being sued by RedOctane for it. Which is ridiculous, since RedOctane has a history themselves of producing non-licensed controllers for musical games such as Dance Dance Revolution. More »
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RedOctane, the publisher of Guitar Hero, have initiated a lawsuit against "The Ant Commandos", a California-based company that sells the one Guitar Hero peripheral everyone wants: wireless guitar controllers. More »
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Gamasutra holds up the mirror to the acne-pocked, wolf-whistling face of the gaming industry in Where's Our Merchant Ivory, an article that addresses the lack of intellectualism in video games and what it means for the reputation of the genre as a whole. More »
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Ooooh hoo hooo! Catty! More »
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1up reports that art firm Massive Black is pursuing legal action against the head and a former employee of its Shanghai devision, James Xi Zhang and Jenny Chen, respectively. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=187708&view=rss&microfeed=true So much fighting going on this week. Here's what all the hubbub's been about at Kotaku for the week of June 18. More »
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If you've ever felt a molten explosion in your brain while playing a video game and found yourself on the floor, your spine whipping about like an unleashed firehose, you may very well be in luck. James Sokolove is interested in your story. More importantly, he's interested in suing the game industry for you. More »
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EA Spouse, what hast thou wrought? First, you brought the mighty colossus — EA — to its knees by inspiring a $14.1 million dollar lawsuit against them for unpaid overtime. And now you've become a patron saint of another plaintiff in his suit against Activision. More »
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Lucent Technologies patent number 5,227,878 has long been a thorn in Microsoft's side. It features "adaptive coding and decoding of frames and fields of video," in relation to MPEG 2 video content. Lucent's been trying to get a hunk of change out of Microsoft for years, but their last bout three years ago over the same patent ended in a triumph for Microsoft — they convinced the judge to throw out the case because of a typo in the lawsuit. Got to love the justice system. More »
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