3 Count: Heroes Retreat

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1: Judge Won’t Stop Video Game Sales

First off today, Philip A. Janquart at Courthouse News Service is reporting that a federal judge has denied an injunction against the popular game “Heroes Charge” even though a competitor claims it was created using stolen source code.

The lawsuit was filed by Shanghai-based Lilith Games, which claims that U.S.-based uncool used nearly a quarter of a million lines of code from the game “The legend of Sword and Tower” to create “Heroes Charge”, prompting them to sue for copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets. However, the judge denied an injunction saying that Lilith Games could not show imminent harm that could not be remedied with monetary damages.

Still, the judge expressed his belief that Lilith Games will be able to prove ownership, access and substantial similarity between the works, making them likely to prevail. uCool alleges that such an injunction would be moot as they have already rewritten the code into another language, however, Lilith claims that 99% of the players of the game are currently using the infringing version.

2: Cox Accuses Rightscorp of Mass Copyright Infringement

Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that Cox Communications, the third largest ISP in the United States, has accused the anti-piracy service Rightscorp, saying that the service has committed massive copyright infringement in its quest to track piracy.

The filing is part of a larger lawsuit that pits two music publishers, BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music, against Cox. They claimed that Cox has failed to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by not forwarding copyright notices or adequately terminating repeat infringers and, as such, lost their “safe harbor” provided by the law and are liable for infringement.

The rightsholders used Rightscorp to track the sharing of works they control. However, Cox has hit back in the lawsuit not only calling into question the quality of Rightscorp evidence, but also saying Rightscorp committed copyright infringement in its investigation. Rightscorp, to track piracy, downloads files from BitTorrent networks but, according to Cox, it didn’t have permission from the record labels, meaning its downloads were infringements of the copyright in the recording.

3: Megaupload Partners Feared Dotcom Would Flee with All the Money

Finally today, La Prensa reports that, as the Kim Dotcom extradition hearing moves forward, more details are coming about about Megaupload and in the form of Skype chats being introduced into evidence, one of which indicates that Dotcom’s employees feared that trouble was imminent and that Dotcom would go into hiding with Megaupload’s money if it did.

Kim Dotcom, along with many of his employees, was arrested in January 2012 in New Zealand in an operation spearheaded by the FBI that also resulted in the closure of his then-site, Megaupload. Dotcom faces extradition to the United States on charges of criminal copyright infringement, fraud and money laundering but repeated delays have pushed back the extradition hearing, which only recently got underway.

However, some of Dotcom’s employees were worried that, should the site find itself in legal trouble, Dotcom would abscond with any money he could and go into hiding. Messages also show Dotcom describing the group as “evil” and saying they survived on the back of piracy. The hearing is expected to last at least three weeks.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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