Hi IP friends, in an attempt to wind down from the IP exam, I made myself a nice latte with some latte art and fired up my favorite game, ‘League of Legends’ but what do I see? IP issues again!
On December 18th, a decision was made in California federal court for a Singapore-based video game maker Suga Pte to pay Riot Games (creators of League of Legends) a 1 million dollar judgment. Additionally, the Court issued a permanent ban of Suga Pte’s game in response to Riot’s copyright lawsuit. (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/riot-games-gets-court-ban-alleged-league-legends-ripoff-2023-12-18/).
This lawsuit is somewhat ironic to me as Riot Games’ three biggest titles: League of Legends, Valorant, and Team Fight Tactics, were all clear copycats of other well known games, Dota, Counterstrike, and Autochess, respectively. However, due to Riot Games’ success, Riot is now pursuing legal actions all over the world the go after game makers that are in theory, doing the same thing. As I understand it, the difference between Riot’s copies and the other games’ copies are that Riot only borrows the concepts of how the games operate and create their own games with original characters and gameplay, which are distinct from the originals, while maintaining the same objectives and game format. But where is that line drawn?
Another interesting point to mention was how Riot Games is fully acquired by Tencent Holdings, giant Chinese tech company, which created a very popular copycat of League of legends called the “Honor of Kings” in 2015. This led to some conflicts between Riot Games and Tencent as Riot believed that Honor of Kings was “blatantly ripping off the intellectual property of League of Legends”, but as Riot Games was fully acquired by Tencent since 2011, Riot games acquiesced in Tencent’s ripping-off after some changes were made (https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-top-mobile-game-complete-league-legends-ripoff). Despite this, Tencent now actively brings claims along with Riot against other companies copying their games, which I see as somewhat ironic.
Communications Law
This is a very interesting development. I don’t see anything wrong with pursuing legal action against a company that is reusing assets made by another company but I do not think that copyright should be used to prevent companies from creating a game that bears similarities to another franchise. Otherwise, games like Battlefront would never have been made due to similarities between it and Call Of Duty. Much like how it is impossible to copyright an entire genre of films, I do not think that the law should support companies from monopolizing entire genre of video games.
I also agree with Joel, particularly the concern of allowing companies to monopolize entire genres of video games. I also think that this anti-monopoly policy should be stretched further to disallow the monopolization of game mechanics. Take rhythm games for example, there are only so many ways in which a game could allow someone to hit a note on a particular beat (with a few notable examples such as Cytus and Deemo) most rhythm games follow the same mechanic. Much like how the concept of a checkmark is not copyrightable, I feel like such fundamental game mechanical follow suite.
I also agree with Joel, particularly the concern of allowing companies to monopolize entire genres of video games. I also think that this anti-monopoly policy should be stretched further to disallow the monopolization of game mechanics. Take rhythm games for example, there are only so many ways in which a game could allow someone to hit a note on a particular beat (with a few notable examples such as Cytus and Deemo) most rhythm games follow the same mechanic. Much like how the concept of a checkmark is not copyrightable, I feel like such fundamental game mechanical follow suite.
Really great points Joel and Vy! I definitely agree with you guys that setting a precedent of anti-monopoly within the gaming space is crucial to foster the development of the gaming industry. And Vy, I agree with you that the policy should be stretched further to allow for more freedom within game development. Also, Cytus and Deemo were some of my favorite games on my phone back in the day! Big rhythm game fan here.