Tag: Lawsuit

IPE Update: Acceleration Bay Files MTD Against Epic Games


Nearly two months ago Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Acceleration Bay LLC seeking declaratory judgment from the court in regard to allegations that Epic was using technology owned by AB in one of its many patents. Acceleration Bay filed a motion to dismiss on lack of subject matter jurisdiction (wrong court) as well as lack of controversy. In order to receive a declaratory judgment, a plaintiff must show the court that there is very likely to be a lawsuit over the matter.

“The Court should dismiss this action because there is no immediate case or controversy between Epic Games and Acceleration Bay. Epic Games seeks declaratory judgment of non-infringement of seven patents owned by Acceleration Bay. But in the pre-suit communications that Epic Games alleges gave rise to this action, Acceleration Bay did not provide Epic Games with any claim charts or infringement analysis and Acceleration Bay did not threaten Epic Games with litigation. Instead, the parties were engaged in preliminary licensing discussions, when Epic Games abruptly filed this action. The Complaint fails to allege facts sufficient to confer declaratory subject matter jurisdiction over this action, dictating dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1).”

For its part, Acceleration Bay has denied ever threatening Epic with a lawsuit (despite evidence from Epic showing just that) but instead offering a “mutually acceptable path forward” which may end up on the list of veiled threats alongside “nice business you got here, it’d be a shame of something were to happen to it.”

“Acceleration Bay never threatened Epic Games with litigation. For example, on April 30, 2019 and May 8, 2019, Acceleration Bay’s representative (Mr. Garland) stated in an email that Acceleration Bay is “interested in arranging an introductory meeting [to] provide an overview of Acceleration Bay and to agree to a mutually acceptable path forward” and that Acceleration Bay “remain[s] interested in trying to reach a business solution with Epic Games.” Declaration of Paul Andre filed herewith (“Andre Decl.”), Ex. 1 at 1.”

See? No threats, just wanting to reach an amicable solution (and sue if you don’t meet our demands). If you wanted to see the “generic, substance-free form letter” that Epic received, I have included it below.

As always, MMO Fallout has provided the court dockets in our Google Drive at the attached link. Download it, share it, do whatever you want with it. It is 74 pages in whole so get yourself a nice cup of coffee before you dive in.

More on this story as it develops.

In Plain English: Youtube Hauls Copyright Troll Into Court


Youtube is finally taking the fight to copyright trolls and this week filed a lawsuit against an individual for allegedly abusing the DMCA takedown system in order to extort and harass Youtube creators into paying him money.

The defendant is Christopher Brady, an individual residing in Omaha, Nebraska. According to a complaint filed in the District of Nebraska, Youtube alleges that Brady has sent dozens of DMCA takedown notices making false claims of copyright infringement. The DMCA takedowns were part of a campaign to harass and extort money from the creators, with Brady threatening to send additional fraudulent notices in order to cause the termination of his victim’s Youtube accounts unless they paid him off. Brady is also accused of misusing the personal information that his victims supplied to him during the counter notification process.

Youtube’s attorneys went as far as bringing attention to the DMCA’s built-in risk of abuse:

“Further abuse can arise because of the DMCA’s counter notification process. Under the DMCA, users who believe that their content was removed because of an improper takedown notice may ask YouTube to restore the content pending resolution of the question of infringement. To trigger the counter notification process, a user must supply their name, address and phone number to YouTube, provide details of the allegedly wrongful takedown notice, and consent to be sued by the original complainant. In accordance with the DMCA, YouTube forwards a copy of complete and valid counter notifications to the original complainant. Instead of using the personal information in a counter notification for purposes of resolving an infringement dispute, abusive complainants may use it for purposes of harassment.”

Brady is accused of targeting multiple Youtube accounts although the lawsuit notes two in particular that Brady allegedly proceeded to send ransom letters to, promising that he would rescind the strikes if money was sent via Paypal or bitcoin in the sum of over $100. Both Youtubers publicized their experiences which brought the extortion attempt to Youtube’s attention.

But the story gets worse. It always gets worse.

Further on, Youtube alleges that Brady attempted to extort a Youtuber going by the handle Cxlvxn. When Cxlvxn submitted a counter notification, his house was swatted.

“Cxlvxn submitted a counter notification on July 4th, 2019. On July 10th, he announced via Twitter that he had been the victim of a swatting scheme that day. “Swatting” is the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address. Given the timing of (i) Defendant Brady’s online dispute with Cxlvxn, (ii) Brady’s false copyright claims against Cxlvxn; (iii) Brady’s receipt of Cxlvxn’s true home address via Cxlvxn’s counter-notification; and (iv) the reported swatting incident, it appears Brady used the personal information gained through his abuse of the DMCA process to engage in swatting.”

All in all, Youtube alleges that Brady submitted more than two dozen false DMCA claims, which were signed under penalty of perjury, using at least fifteen fake identities all of which were traced back to him. The false claims have caused Youtube a substantial sum in investigating to detect and halt his behavior, and the very real possibility that Brady will continue his abusive conduct into the future.

Youtube is requesting compensatory damages for violation of 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), attorneys’ fees, injunctive relief barring Brady and his associates from filing false DMCA strikes, and anything else the court may deem appropriate. When parties file at DMCA takedown, they affirm that they do so under penalty of perjury for false claims and may be held liable for damages incurred by their false claim.

As always, the docket related to the case has been uploaded to the MMO Fallout Google Drive. All allegations laid forth in the lawsuit above are mere allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. More information to come as the case progresses.

IPE Update: Trion Worlds Lawsuit Coming To A Close As Parties Agree On Settlement


(Update 8/10/19: Included some background information on the case for those who might not be as familiar)

It’s finally over, folks. After nearly four years in court, the Trion Worlds lawsuit may finally be reaching its final days.

Earlier this month in the superior court of San Mateo, California, dockets have been submitted to the court offering notice that the parties involved in the lawsuit have agreed in principle to settle the case. According to court filings, the terms of the settlement have not yet been documented, but will be coming in the near future.

It is also worth noting that payment for the settlement will come from Navigators Insurance Company, the insurer for Trion Worlds, and Trion Worlds will be dismissed from liability for the claims.

Plaintiffs and Navigators Insurance Company, the insurer for the officers and directors of Defendant Trion Worlds, Inc., have reached an agreement in principle to settle this case on class wide basis. The proposed settlement will provide for notice to the class members of the proposed settlement, payments to members of the proposed settlement class who file claims, and will release Defendant Trion Worlds, Inc. from liability for the claims asserted in this action. The parties are working to document all of the terms of the settlement.

At some point there will be notification for members of the class who will be eligible for compensation.

Four years ago, Aaron Van Fleet and Paul Ovberg along with other plaintiffs filed suit against Trion Worlds regarding their publishing of the game ArcheAge. The lawsuit alleged false advertising regarding pre-release advertising offering a 10% discount on cash shop purchases for subscribers. That 10% discount was later retroactively scrubbed from press releases and ultimately was scrapped entirely, with Trion Worlds replacing the deal with a 10% bonus on all gem purchases that did not extend to a number of customers that would otherwise be covered by the discount on shop purchases. The lawsuit also claimed that Trion’s loot box system violated California penal code against illegal lottery.

Since then, Trion Worlds has virtually gone bust with the company transferring its assets to another Trion Worlds and then selling off those assets to Gamigo. Their defense of this lawsuit has been primarily funded from liability insurance.

As always, dockets cited will be available in the MMO Fallout Google Drive. This file is labeled “settlement.pdf”. MMO Fallout will keep a closer eye on the lawsuit and update as new information becomes available.

IPE Update: A List Of Companies Subpoena’d By Twitch


It’s time to talk about Twitch again, and that means the Twitch v. John Doe lawsuit.

When last we left our heroes, Twitch had filed suit in the Northern District of California against one hundred John Doe defendants for federal trademark infringement, breach of contract, trespass to chattels, and fraud. The lawsuit targeted the antics of users who gained some notoriety earlier in the year for filling the Artifact category of Twitch will all sorts of vile material, including hardcore pornography and videos of real life killings.

This week Judge Orrick granted Twitch’s application for leave in order to file subpoenas against third parties, with the ultimate goal being to uncover the identities of the defendants in the lawsuit. Those third parties include:

  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Microsoft/Hotmail
  • Discord
  • Verizon
  • Comcast Cable Communications LLC
  • Contina, Charter Communications Inc.
  • Optimum Online
  • Suddenlink Communications
  • OVH Hosting

Third party subpoena recipients will have 30 days with which to serve the defendants with a copy of the subpoena and a copy of the order, and then the defendants will have 30 days to file any orders contesting or squashing the subpoena, after which the third party recipients will have 10 days to produce information responsive to Twitch.

In fancy terms, those who suspect or have a good idea that they may become a defendant in this lawsuit will have ample notice that they are in fact a defendant.

As always, MMO Fallout has provided the related docket at our expense in the Google Drive.

IPE Update: Amro Elansari Files Appeal In RuneScape Lawsuit


Posted with no comment. PDF version available here.

In Plain English: Epic and the Generic, Substance-Free Patent Troll


Epic Games is once again back in court, except this time they are taking on a more defensive tone.

As of July 18, Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Acceleration Bay LLC regarding some bad blood between the two companies that has boiled over in the past few years. According to court dockets filed in the Northern District of California, Epic Games is asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement regarding seven patents owned by the defendant.

According to Epic’s filing, defendant Acceleration Bay LLC in early 2015 acquired a number of patents from The Boeing Company. These patents cover a computer network and/or broadcast channel with an m-regular, incomplete topology. I’ll let the docket try to explain some of it, but it has to do with how computers interact on a network.

  • The claims of these patents all require that (1) each participant/computer in the network must have connections to at least three other neighboring participants.
  • The claims of these patents all require that (2) the network must be “m-regular” where each participant is connected to the exact same number, m, of neighbor participants.
  • The claims of these patents all require that (3) the network must be incomplete – m must be at least two less than the total number of participants.
  • 31. In other words, each participant must be connected to at least three neighbor participants, and no participant can be connected to all of the other participants in the network.

Fast forward to 2018 and Acceleration Bay’s lawyers sent a letter to Epic with allegedly no explanation or information, and claimed that Epic was infringing on their patents and would require a license. The letter was apparently so poorly vetted by AB’s legal team that they didn’t notice that the threat still contained the name of an unrelated company that AB had presumably also threatened over its patents.

As they say, bad form.

Additionally, Epic asserted that Acceleration Bay couldn’t get through its letter without completely lying about its own existence, claiming that it was founded in 2012 (it was founded in August 2014), and calling itself a “technology incubator” (it isn’t) that “partners with inventors, corporations and entrepreneurs to accelerate growth in creating innovative companies.” AB doesn’t accelerate growth in anything. Acceleration Bay, according to Epic’s attorneys, does not provide any product or service whatsoever, and exists only to monetize patents acquired from third parties. According to Epic’s attorney’s, AB is exclusively in the market of monetizing patents.

On July 10, representatives of both companies sat down to a teleconference and evidently nothing was accomplished. AB’s attorneys don’t appear to understand what their own patent covers, or how Epic operates their games, as Epic states in the court dockets that many online multiplayer games, especially those being asserted in this lawsuit, do not function the way that the patent would cover, as player networks are communicating with Epic’s servers and not each other.

Epic has assembled its Avengers team of lawyers from the offices of Winston & Strawn to convince the court for a preemptive declaration that Epic is not infringing on any patents alleged in this case. Acceleration had not filed a lawsuit against Epic, however the threatening letters are enough for Epic to go to the court and demand an answer to force the letters to stop. Acceleration Bay has 21 days to respond to the lawsuit.

As always, MMO Fallout has acquired at our own cost the dockets for this case and they can be found on our Google Drive. The docket itself is linked here, as Acceleration.pdf, or it will be in a folder titled “Acceleration” once more dockets are uploaded.

I paid way too much for this article. If you really like patents, I recommend checking out the docket because it’s about 25 pages of the actual lawsuit and then 350+ of the patents at dispute presented at evidence. Our condolences go out to the court clerk who had to print this out and file it.

In Plain English: Court Throws Out Jagex Ban Lawsuit After Five Days


Today’s In Plain English is going to be a short one, but you’ll understand why when you see that the gist of it is about six sentences long. It comes to us from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and involves everyone’s favorite developer of RuneScape: Jagex. Along with their parent company Shanghai Fukong, Jagex last week was sued in Pennsylvania court by one Amro Elansari, who is alleging that Jagex muted him without reason. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the UK developer refused to provide an explanation and denied Elansari’s request for an appeal. Elansari’s suit alleges violations of due process, free speech, and human rights.

Elansari was granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis, fancy legal speak for nulling filing fees, however the court took some umbrage with his claims. Judge Kearney noted that Elansari’s claims of constitutional violations were implausible, adding that the first amendment and its constitutional free speech guarantees do not restrict private entities. More so, the fifth amendment due process clause also does not apply to private companies.

As such, Elansari’s lawsuit has been dismissed just five days after being filed. Elansari cannot make any further constitutional or federal claims however if he decides to bring the lawsuit back on state charges in state court, he absolutely may do so.

As always, MMO Fallout is hosting the relevant dockets at our expense at the Google Drive. As the lawsuit was filed pro se, MMO Fallout has removed some personal contact details from the documents for the sake of the plaintiff.

IPE Update: Epic Games Brings Financial Suplex On Counterfeiters


It may not surprise you, the enlightened MMO Fallout reader, to hear that none of Epic’s roughly one thousand (Chinese and otherwise) defendants showed up or even answered the summons to appear in court regarding a lawsuit for Fortnite counterfeit merchandise. I talked about this briefly at the end of April and haven’t issued much in the way of updates because there hasn’t been anything substantial to talk about.

By the way, I’m not joking that this lawsuit started with roughly a thousand defendants. 923 in fact of which nearly 200 are included in this judgment. Over the course of the last two months, Epic has been slowly dropping defendants from the list, presumably the random accounts that could never be tied to an actual person. They were successful in forcibly transferring domains, freezing assets, and more.

The good news for Epic is that none of the thousand defendants bothered to answer the summons or show up, making it a whole lot easier to get the judge to sign an order of default judgment which Judge Guzman did on June 27. Far from simply imposing a permanent enjoinder on defendants from counterfeiting more of Epic’s products, and good luck enforcing that on some pop tent company in Shenzhen, the order goes quite a bit further. Judge Guzman awarded Epic Games $1 million in damages from each defendant.

He also ordered that Western Union must within two days permanently block all money transfers to the defendants. Ebay, Paypal, ContextLogic, and AliPay (and all of its related entities) have been ordered to permanently restrain all accounts associated with the defendants from transferring any money within two days. All monies within the accounts connected to the defendants has been seized and will be paid out to Epic and until the judgment amount is fully paid all new accounts created by the defendants will be seized and funds transferred to Epic as well. Epic also has the authority to serve any financial institution that is identified to have been accessed by the defendants, with the financial institute required to freeze their assets, remove their ability to transfer funds, and release all monies held on the accounts to Epic to ensure full payment.

As always, the legal documents have been uploaded to the MMO Fallout Google Drive, at our expense, for your perusal.

In Plain English: Remember the Artifact Twitch Trolls? Twitch Is Suing Them


Donde los yikes!

And some of you thought it wouldn’t get any crazier than Jagex suing anonymous cheaters. Those of you who follow internet drama very closely may recall that last month there was a bit of a controversy surrounding the Artifact category of Twitch streams. Specifically that people were using the service to stream movies and in some cases really inappropriate videos like the Christchurch shooting and hardcore pornography. Twitch acted pretty fast to ban the accounts and stop new streams from going up in the section, but the damage was pretty much done.

Fast forward a few weeks and Twitch is suing! The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California has been officially dubbed Twitch Interactive Inc. v. John and Jane Does 1-100. The lawsuit demands a jury trial and couches its claims in federal trademark infringement, breach of contract, trespass to chattels, and fraud. As always, links to the documents have been provided via Google Drive at MMO Fallout’s expense, below this article.

Among its claims, Twitch believes that users took advantage of automated software to continue creating Twitch accounts and streaming the live massacre and copyright infringing movies, as well as using bots to artificially increase the popularity of said streams in order to make them more discoverable by actual people. The streams actually became enough of a problem that Twitch was forced to disable streaming for all new accounts before imposing two-factor authentication for certain accounts. Those responsible for streaming the illicit material then went to the lengths of using old accounts and even purchasing accounts in order to keep streaming.

For using the Glitch and Twitch marks on a website associated with the streaming raids, Twitch is asking for injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and attorneys’ fees related to trademark infringement. For breaching contract by willfully, continuously, and materially breaching the Twitch terms of service, Twitch is asking for special damages in lost profits and other reasonably foreseeable harms caused by defendant’s breach. For trespass to chattels (unlawful interference with another person’s property) by continuing to access the service after being banned, Twitch is asking for injunctive relief, compensatory damage, attorneys’ fees, and other remedies. And for committing fraud in misrepresenting and concealing their identities, Twitch is asking for all compensatory and punitive damages available.

In addition, Twitch is asking the courts to permanently enjoin defendants from using Twitch services, creating any bot that would interact with Twitch, using the Twitch trademarks, and assisting in anyone else who might do the above.

Source: Google Drive

In Plain English: Epic Takes On Counterfeiters


Here’s a quick tip on counterfeiting merchandise from one of the most litigious companies in the gaming industry: Don’t.

Epic Games is back in court, because the company refuses to let its lawyers have an easy week. This time around, the company isn’t going after Fortnite cheat distributors. On April 25, 2019, Epic filed suit in the Northern District of Illinois for the sale of products in connection with the registered trademark of Fortnite. The lawsuit contends that the defendants are going to great lengths to hide the extent of their operations and are selling inferior quality products designed to look like authorized merchandise.

Who are the defendants? Good question. Epic lists them as individuals and businesses residing in China and other foreign jurisdictions.

Epic seeks relief on charges of counterfeiting and trademark infringement, false designation of origin, violation of the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and has demanded an enjoinment from using the Fortnite brand, passing off counterfeit products as genuine, that all profits gained through the counterfeiting operation be handed to Epic or that statutory damages of $2 million USD for each use of the Fortnite trademark be awarded. They also seek reasonable attorney fees and any further damages the court might award.

Epic’s attorneys are meeting with the court today (April 30) to discuss a motion for temporary transfer of defendant’s domain names, temporary asset restraint (freezing assets), expedited discovery, service of process by email, among other motions.

MMO Fallout could not ascertain the identities of the defendants, as those documents have been sealed by the court, possibly to prevent potential defendants from transferring assets in anticipation of a restraint. Similarly, there are no exhibits of such merchandise available at this time for potentially the same reason.

As always, the court dockets have been provided at our expense to you, the reader, at the Google Drive linked below.

Source: Google Drive