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LGJ: If 24 songs = $1.9 million, then 1 game = ?
Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games: Maybe you heard about the verdict that just came out in one of the music file-sharing cases: $1.9 million for 24 songs. So, what does this have to do with gaming? More than you would probably imagine, since this gets to the root of copyright and statutory damages. In fact, EFF legal scholar Fred von Lohmann posted an interesting piece on whether the penalty is even Constitutional. Whether this is the suit that breaks the back of statutory damages has yet to be seen, but it's something that any media producer or consumer should be keeping an eye on.Of course, much of that may be getting ahead of the issue of explaining this decision in greater depth so that everyone can understand what the actual problem is. We've talked about copyright infringement and piracy at length on LGJ, and the issue here is what comes after someone is found to have infringed on a copyrighted work: damages. Specifically, we're talking about statutory damages, which something a lot of people may not be very familiar with at all.
Legal action between ZAM and Curse results in dismissal
So remember when Curse introduced their database last year called WoWDB, and we pointed out that it bore a strong resemblance to that other popular WoW database, Wowhead? Turns out ZAM, the owners of Wowhead after the acquisition a little while ago, agreed: completely under the radar last May, they filed a lawsuit for copyright infringment to the tune of no less than $1.5 million. ZAM says in the suit, copies of which we've obtained, that they've "expended substantial resources to maintain, update, and promote use of the WOWHEAD website so that it would become... one of the most recognized, and utilized websites designed to attract individuals" who play World of Warcraft. They claimed that WoWDB stole their look and layout purposely to create confusion among customers. This story wasn't reported in the WoW community at the time -- we hadn't heard about it at all until now.And then, in January of this year, the case was dismissed completely by a judge. We've also seen a copy of the order for dismissal, and from what it says, both sides wanted out: "Pursuant to the parties' stipulation for dismissal, the court hereby dismisses the above-captioned action without prejudice." We don't have any information, however, why the case was suddenly dismissed, but there may have been an agreement made between the two parties -- either money changed hands or WoWDB offered to change its look (as you can see, there's still many similarities between the two sites). Or, as a third option, ZAM just decided it wasn't worth fighting -- according to the comments and activity on both sites, WoWDB doesn't seem to be a serious threat to Wowhead.We've contacted both sides for comment, and we'll let you know if we hear anything from either one. On the front of it, this looks like ZAM was merely covering themselves -- they filed suit just in case, but never found cause to follow through. But there may be some other agreement between these two companies that lead to the case's dismissal.
