ip-infringement
Latest
Blizzard fights Snail Games over panda design
Fresh off of a win with its Hearthstone lawsuit, Blizzard is jumping right back in to the legal waters with a fight against Snail Games. What did Snail do to anger the glacial giant so? Apparently, the developer is coming out with a mobile game named Taichi Panda that features a panda, and you can already see where this is going. Blizzard and its Chinese partner NetEase claims that Snail's panda design is far too similar to those seen in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. NetEase also has an issue with Shaman and Goblin art styles in the mobile game. NetEase is requesting that Apple take down the mobile app, while Snail is defending its design choices.
Project Tank tanked by World of Tanks
A while ago, Project Tank popped up on our radar for two reasons. First of all, it was a browser-based multiplayer tank-based combat simulator. Second, it bore a lot of similarities to the existing multiplayer tank-based combat simulator World of Tanks, enough that Wargaming.net brought out the copyright lawyers. A copyright infringement suit was filed today by Wargaming.net, claiming that Project Tank directly copies many elements of World of Tanks and violates some existing patents. Gamebox has responded to these claims on the official site for the game, claiming that Wargaming.net has engaged in "underhanded" actions to try to shut down the project. This marks the end of the closed beta for Project Tank, which is promising open beta in approximately a month. You can take a look at the side-by-side comparison from before and draw your own conclusions about whether Project Tank is being unfairly accused or entirely fairly accused.
Valve removes 'player-created' Aion mace from Dota 2
After discovering that a mace supposedly created by a player in the Steam Workshop and then added to Dota 2 was actually copied from NCsoft's MMORPG Aion, Valve removed the item and issued a warning to players. Believing the mace model the author's original work, Valve made it available to Dota 2 players who purchased a key to unlock a special chest. But Valve's community noticed the mace was Aion's Marchutan's Blessed Mace and reported the IP infringement. All 24,603 players who previously acquired the mace were issued replacement weapons for the confiscated one. The uploader of the mace has been banned, and all proceeds from the sale of the weapon have been stripped from his account. Valve posted a reminder that contributors to the Workshop must respect the intellectual property of others and encouraged the community to continue to report infringements.
