Lawyer To Pay Activision For Not Playing Call Of Duty, Judge Decrees

A lawsuit against Activision Blizzard was dismissed last month because, according to a judge in the Southern California District Court where the lawsuit was filed, the plaintiffs didn’t play enough call of duty: infinity war file an informed case against the defamed publisher. for once in Activision Blizzard’s many contentious legal battlesthings went smoothly.

According to a report by a litigation associate at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (who tipped Kotaku off), Activision Blizzard was sued in November 2021 by Brooks Entertainment, Inc., a California-based company that specializes in film and television production and other forms of entertainment. Nevertheless, Kotaku could not find an official website for the company. Brooks Entertainment and its CEO, shon brooksself-described inventor, claims to own trademarks for financial mobile games save a bank Y Action picker. it should be noted that Kotaku he was also unable to verify the existence of these games. No matteraAll three of these entities, along with Activision Blizzard and 2016 infinity warThey were at the center of the demand.

In November 2021, Brooks Entertainment alleged Activision ripped off the intellectual property of both save a bank Y stock pickeras well as the identity of its owner, in infinity war. To be more specific, the lawsuit claimed that the “main character” of the 2016 first-person shooter, Sean Brooks, was based on the company’s CEO and that all three games had “scripted battle scenes that take place.” in a haute couture mall. mall.” There were other similarities as well, but these claims were the crux of the complaint.

But if you’ve only played an hour or so of infinity warYou would know that this is all wrong. For one thing, the main character is not Corporal Sean Brooks not at all, but rather his squadmate Commander Nick Reyes, a space marine who becomes the captain of the game’s main militia. Furthermore, as long as there a scripted battle scene in a mall, takes place in the distant future of Geneva, one of the many locations in the game, and Sean Brooks is not in it. You play as Kings all the time.

In January 2022, Activision’s attorney wrote to Brooks Entertainment’s attorney that the complaint “contains[ed] misrepresentations and gross errors of fact, and that the assertions set forth therein are frivolous in law and in fact.” If the company did not drop the lawsuit, Activision would file Rule 11 sanctions, sanctions that force the plaintiff to pay a fine for presenting dubious or improper arguments without substantial, or, for that matter, accurate evidentiary support. And that’s exactly what happened in March 2022, when Activision filed its sanctions motions against Brooks Entertainment, saying the plaintiffs didn’t play. infinity war and provided inaccurate files.

The Southern District Court of California accepted Activision’s motions on July 12, it dismissed Brook Entertainment’s lawsuit with prejudice (meaning the claim cannot be refiled in that court) and ordered the plaintiff’s attorney to compensate the troubled publisher for money and time lost. In its conclusion, the court said that the plaintiff did not conduct a thorough and reasonable investigation into the relevant facts of the game before filing the lawsuit.

“Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare it is a first person shooter, not first and third person as alleged, and Sean Brooks is not directing a scripted battle scene in a high fashion mall,” the court said in its ruling in favor of Activision. “The plaintiff’s attorney could easily have verified these facts before filing the Lawsuit without factual basis, just as the Court easily verified them within the first hour and a half of play.”

Kotaku has contacted Activision Blizzard for comment.

Richard Hoeg, a lawyer who specializes in digital and video game law, said Kotaku that unprotected concepts, such as the names of people used in fictional entertainment, are quite difficult to copyright and claim infringement.

“It’s hard to say why the lawsuit was filed,” Hoeg said. “Certainly, if a lawsuit gets kicked out *with sanctions*, it wasn’t very good in the first place. It may just be arrogance or it may have been a lawyer encouraging a lawsuit against a well-resourced party. The suit itself says [Brooks Entertainment] released a game to Activision between 2010 [and] 2015. All that said, the infringement lawsuit is horrific, alleging infringement of concepts as unprotectable as: ‘Shon Brooks sails through exotic, action-packed locales and Sean Brooks sails through exotic, action-packed locales’” .

Hoeg went on to say that it is difficult to get “real sanctions” because that would be a level of filing an improper lawsuit far above a simple dismissal.

“The court basically finds the entire argument to be insane,” Hoeg concluded. “Brooks Entertainment even listed Rockstar Games for no reason (which didn’t help their case with the judge). So the sanctions here are Brooks Entertainment [has] to pay Activision’s legal fees and costs.”

While things may have ended well for Activision this time around, the underappreciated publisher is still causing legal headaches. the company was just exploded by Devil developers to break unions. Again. Yuck.