Tag: Lawsuit

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

IPE Update: Epic Games v. Sperry Ends


Another Epic Games lawsuit has come to a close.

Plaintiff Epic Games and defendant Joseph Sperry, a.k.a “Spoezy” in a lawsuit related to the creation and distribution of cheat software for the video game Fortnite. According to the lawsuit filed by Epic, Sperry promoted, marketed, and sold the cheats to third parties for financial gain, and engaged in acts of contributory copyright infringement as well as contributing substantially to infringement by others through the sale of his software.

Sperry was hit with a DMCA violation, and has been permanently enjoined and restrained from infringement of any Epic product, current or future, as well as having any relation to infringing software of any of Epic’s copyrights, cheating at any Epic’s games, interfering with their contracts or contractual relations, unfairly competing with Epic, or assisting in any way another party in infringing on Epic’s copyrights.

Both parties have accepted the terms of the judgment and neither party may appeal this ruling. If Sperry violates the terms of the ruling, the court holds the right to award Epic liquidated damages of five thousand dollars without regard to proof of actual damages, as well as possibly other relief including attorneys’ fees, costs, as determined by the court.

Epic filed suit in the North Carolina Eastern District Court, Western Division. Epic Games has filed ten lawsuits since October 10, 2017 against cheat creators/distributors for Fortnite with most of the cases ending in simple court-ordered injunctions. All but one of those lawsuits has since been closed.

As always, MMO Fallout has provided the documents on our Google Drive. The file is listed as “Sperry-Judgment”.

Source: Google Drive

IPE Update: When Riot Sued Over A League of Legends Ripoff


Way back in the distant year of 2017 I reported on the case of Riot Games v. Shanghai Moonton Technology Co., and due to a case of poor diligence on my part, I never actually followed up on that case. The gist of the lawsuit is simple; Riot filed lawsuit in California court alleging copyright infringement by a mobile League of Legends ripoff Mobile Legends. What actually brought the lawsuit to my scope of coverage wasn’t so much that the lawsuit existed but the fact that Shanghai Moonton Tech Co. doesn’t seem to understand the concept of the free press and decided to threaten lawsuits against anyone even covering the case. To that I welcome their lawyers with open arms and an ethics complaint with the state bar association.

Well the lawsuit didn’t go far. As you might expect, Moonton answered Riot’s lawsuit with a motion for dismissal as well as a motion for forum non conveniens. For those who don’t want to hit the Google machine, this is a power that the courts in the States have to exercise their authority to simply not take a case if another court is more convenient. In this case, the court determined that Moonton is a very, very Chinese company that does its principle business in China which begs the question of what this case is doing in California.

“Moonton is a video game company based in China with approximately 215 employees (including the employees of its subsidiaries) located in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hefei. It conducts all of its engineering operations in China. All of Moonton’s employees communicate with one another in Mandarin, and documents and emails are drafted in Mandarin.”

As the court points out, having the case in the states would just be a gigantic pain when it could so much more easily be held in China. Moonton successfully convinced the court that while a trial in California would require witness testimony and mean that Moonton would need to bring employees from China to California at great expense, that courts in China do not operate the same way and that Riot would be unlikely to have to transport any employees as witnesses.

“For the reasons set forth below, the FNC Motion is GRANTED. The courts of China provide an adequate alternative forum for this litigation. Though Riot’s choice to sue here would ordinarily be entitled to substantial deference, the unique circumstances of this case and relevant private interest factors – most notably the risk of inconsistent judgments and overlapping damages awards, and Moonton’s inability to depose Tencent and likely difficulty obtaining documents from Tencent if the case proceeds here – outweigh that deference and militate in favor of dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds.”

The court also took issue with an apparent coordination between Riot Games and its parent company Tencent, with Riot suing Moonton in the US while Tencent sues them in China as being unfair as Riot/Tencent would have access to each others documents while Moonton would likely have more issues.

“Simply put, if Riot is going to sue Moonton here for Bang Bang’s infringement of LoL’s allegedly original game map while Tencent, its Chinese parent company with which it coordinates enforcement efforts, simultaneously sues Moonton in China for Bang Bang’s infringement of King’s Glory’s allegedly original game map, it would be unfair in the extreme if Moonton could not depose any Tencent representatives or compel them to testify at trial. But that is precisely what will happen if the case proceeds here.”

Riot naturally is not happy with this decision, and responded by noting that the odds of U.S. Copyright being adequately provided protection in a Chinese court is slim. Unfortunately the court did not see it their way and granted the motion for forum non conveniens. In January 2018, Riot Games filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case was assigned a docket number, both parties named their council, and…nothing happened.

After seven months of silence, Riot quietly dropped the appeal.

Unfortunately for Moonton and their League of Legends ripoff, the Shanghai Courts were not so lenient on the company. The lawsuit by Tencent continued and in July of last year the court handed over a $2.9 million verdict in Tencent’s favor. Incidentally the lawsuit targeted not Moonton as a company, but its CEO Xu Zhenhua.

Moral of the story: Don’t steal from Tencent, they will destroy you. As always, the files sourced in the above article have been uploaded to the MMO Fallout Google Drive for your reading pleasure.

US Copyright Office: No, the Carlton Is Not Copyrightable


Alfonso Ribeiro is best known for his character Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Ribeiro came back into the public spotlight after launching lawsuits against Epic Games and Take-Two Interactive over copyright claims that he owns the famous dance popularized by the TV Show, informally known as The Carlton. The lawsuit alleges that both developers used The Carlton without permission, that Ribeiro is the sole owner, and that he deserves compensation for use of his creation.

Unfortunately for Ribeiro the Copyright office has been rather explicit regarding the copyright status for simple dance routines: They can’t be copyrighted. The Carlton as it turns out is no different.

In a response to his copyright application, the US Copyright Office officially refused registration for The Dance by Alfonso Ribeiro – Variation B, and noted in no uncertain terms that the dance qualified as a simple dance routine and could not be classified as a choreographic work. Choreography is legally defined as a composition and arrangement of a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into an integrated, coherent, and expressive whole. Choreographic works do not include social dance steps and simple routines, and must contain a sufficient amount of choreographic authorship.

As The Carlton is a routine consisting of three dance steps, it is not registrable as a choreographic work. The Copyright office went further in questioning whether or not Ribeiro was even the sole author of the work.

Epic and Take Two are currently fighting legal battles against a growing number of performers and internet celebrities over the use of popular dance moves in Fortnite and NBA 2K. Now that the copyright office has spoken on Ribeiro’s ownership status, it seems likely that Epic’s next move will be a motion to dismiss.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office

IPE (Minor) Update: Trion Worlds Lawsuit As Of January 30, 2019


I’ve been holding off on the Trion Worlds lawsuit coverage for the simple fact that not a whole lot has been happening over the past couple of months, at least nothing of major significance. Right now the case is getting to the end of discovery, this is the portion of the lawsuit where the parties finish up requesting and handing over documents that will be used in the coming trial. To spare you the reader from boredom, I have kindly summarized the last few case management conferences into one sentence: “Information was requested, other information may be requested, we will let you know at the next conference, and class action status is still pending.”

You’re welcome. Now on with the meat of the latest filings:

The Asset Transfer, Or, A New Defendant

If you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing story of Trion Worlds, you’ll know that the company is virtually nonexistent at this point. Last October, Trion transferred its assets and property to Trion Worlds LLC, which subsequently sold said assets to Gamigo. Trion Worlds LLC was issued a subpoena to produce information regarding the transaction and has since turned over an Asset Purchase Agreement and related documents.

The documents have shined light on another entity that may currently possess Trion assets: Golden Gate Games Inc. The plaintiffs not only intend to serve Golden Gate Games with documents and deposition subpoenas, but also have noted their intent to investigate whether individual officers/owners of Trion may be liable to plaintiffs and the proposed class action lawsuit as part of the asset transfer. The document also notes that plaintiffs have been unable to serve Gamigo with subpoenas.

As far as Trion Worlds is concerned, all non-privileged responsive documents have been produced. Trion has not sought any discovery information from the Plaintiffs according to court filings.

What Are We Waiting For?

For the moment, we are waiting to see whether the plaintiffs in the case will be adding an additional party or parties to the defense which will be known within the next two months. The next case management conference is not set until March 15, during which the parties will discuss the ongoing motion to certify the lawsuit for class action status. A request to compel documents pertaining to ArcheAge’s financial information has been deferred for the time being as unnecessary for class certification, however there is the possibility that we will be made privy to the details of Trion’s asset sale to Gamigo at some point in this lawsuit.

Again, there hasn’t been much development over the past two months, and there won’t be for another couple of months to come.

As always, the documents related to the case have been made available on the MMO Fallout Google Drive folder for your use.

IPE: Former Gearbox Counsel Accuses Randy Pitchford of Possessing Underage Pornography (Updates)


(Editor’s Note: It should be noted that any accusations made in this lawsuit are alleged and no presumption of guilt for accusations against either party should be presumed, either implied or otherwise. MMO Fallout makes no conclusion of guilt or innocence on either party.)

(Update Jan 11 6:40p.m.) Gearbox has released a statement to Kotaku that they will be filing a grievance with the STate Bar of Texas against Wade Callender for knowingly filing documents containing false accusations.

(Update Jan 11 6:25p.m.) Randy Pitchford has responded to the allegations in a series of messages on his Twitter account. Pitchford denies the allegations, classifying them as a “shake down” and part of a “greedy pursuit for money.” Randy is confident that he will prevail in the ongoing litigation between both parties.

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Ars Technica has found a podcast in which Randy Pitchford describes that the material left on the USB stick was not “underage” as claimed in the lawsuit. Viewers are only recommended to follow the above link if you really want to know what Randy Pitchford is into.

(Original Story) A former general counsel for Gearbox and Randy Pitchford are currently embroiled in a rather nasty string of lawsuits against one another for a multitude of charges, however a recent court filing has accused the Gearbox CEO of possessing underage pornography.

Both lawsuits detail a myriad of claims regarding breach of duty towards Gearbox as a developer, with Pitchford himself being accused of siphoning a $12 million bonus payment from the company into his personal account, as well as various claims of breach of contract revolving around the developer as well as a separate real estate company. Pitchford is suing, and being sued by, a man named Wade Callender. Callender is a former Navy Lieutenant Commander who worked as General Counsel to Gearbox from 2010 to 2018.

Callender is himself the target of a lawsuit by Gearbox, who accuse him in turn of owing money loaned for a home loan and tuition as well as abusing a company credit card for personal purchases.

 

But a part of this lawsuit comes in the form of a claim against Pitchford that the CEO in 2014 lost a USB drive at a Medieval Times restaurant containing sensitive Gearbox corporate material, which was found by a good samaritan who contacted Gearbox via email to return the device. Pitchford intervened before the data on the drive could be copied, however Callender is claiming that the device contained Pitchford’s personal collection of underage pornography.

“On information and belief, Randy Pitchford’s USB drive contained much more than the sensitive corporate documents of Gearbox and business partners like Take-Two Interactive, 2K Games, Sega, Microsoft, Sony, etc. Upon information and belief, Randy Pitchford’s USB drive also contained Randy Pitchford’s personal collection of “underage” pornography.”

Callender goes on to claim that Pitchford syphoned Gearbox profits to fund parties thrown by himself and his wife. The parties, termed “peacock parties,” in which adult men allegedly exposed themseves to minors, to the amusement of Pitchford himself. Links to both lawsuit filings are below.

Source: Scribd, Scribd

IPE Update: Brandon Lucas Files Motion to Dismiss Epic Lawsuit


Brandon Lucas has filed a motion to dismiss in North Carolina court this week. Lucas is currently being sued by Epic Games over causes of copyright infringement, breach of contract, interference with contractual relations, and unfair/deceptive trade & unfair competition in relation to alleged cheating and promotion of cheats in Fortnite.

The Defendant Brandon Lucas hereby files a motion to dismiss the complaint. The motion date will be scheduled by the Court after proper notice to the Plaintiff, Epic Games, Inc. The Defendant, Brandon Lucas, will rely on the affidavit submitted.

In his motion to dismiss, Lucas claims that he does not own the Youtube channel in question, that the videos posted are not his, that he does not own or advertise any cheats, and that generally Epic has the wrong guy.

Epic filed the lawsuit back in October against Lucas and another defendant. Epic is alleging that Lucas owns, operates, and profits from a website selling cheats and buying accounts for Fortnite. MMO Fallout will update once the court reaches a decision.

The adventurous among you can check out the link below for both the original filing and motion to dismiss. Be aware that the original filing contains all evidence and runs over 160 pages.

(Source: Google Drive)

Trion Worlds Tells Court: Company Disbanded, All Employees Terminated


(Update 10/31/18): Files from a case management conference held on 10/26 have been published. It looks like the council will continue discussing a plan of action moving forward. A CMC has been scheduled for November 19, and we will post an updated piece should anything important be confirmed.

The new document has been uploaded to the Google Drive folder linked at the end of the article.

“The situation was discussed in general among counsel and the Court, and it was agreed that counsel would continue to discuss the situation to keep up to date and formulate plan of action for this case under the circumstances. Defense counsel agreed to seek approval of the Defendant client to provide information about the subject transactions to Plaintiffs’ counsel under confidentiality order. It was agreed to defer setting of class certification, and discovery plan until the next CMC.”

Original Story: One week ago, we learned that Trion Worlds had been acquired by Gamigo with at least 75% of the staff laid off. MMO Fallout has come across a document filed with the San Mateo County Court on October 26 describing that Trion Worlds has disbanded, all of its employees have been terminated, and its directors are gone.

Defendant’s counsel reporter that Trion Worlds has suddenly disbanded this week. All assets and
property were assigned to Trion Worlds (ABC) LLC, and they proceeded to sell the assets and intellectual
property to others, particularly Gamigo, a Germany-based game publisher. All of the employees of Trion
have been terminated effective October 22, 2018, i.e. immediately upon the announcement, and its
directors and officers are gone and the company will be dissolved.

In another case management conference statement filed October 25, Trion’s lawyers noted that they themselves were not aware of the transfer or dissolution until October 18.

Defense counsel first became aware on October 18, 2018 of the transfer of assets of TWI to take place on October 22, 2018 and the corporate dissolution of TWI to follow shortly thereafter. Defense counsel has been actively investigating and assessing since that time the status of TWI-ABC with respect to the claims presented in this action.

Lawyers for the former Trion Worlds have requested a 14 day continuance in order to allow the defense to advise the court and plaintiffs on the impact of the dissolution.

As always, MMO Fallout has made the dockets available via Google Drive at the link below.

(Source: Google Drive)

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