Los Angeles Intellectual Property Trademark Attorney Blog
Los Angeles, CA – Copyright attorneys for Activision filed a copyright infringement lawsuit at the Federal District Court in Los Angeles to protect its video game copyrights and to stop sales of unauthorized copies. Activision is the copyright owner or licensee of exclusive rights in Call Of Duty 3, which game is the subject of two copyright registrations – one for the Xbox 360 version and one for the Nintendo Wii Version – duly issued by the Register of Copyrights. The complaint alleges that, “among the exclusive rights granted to Plaintiff under the Copyright Act are the exclusive rights to reproduce the Copyrighted Video Games, to make or create derivative works from the Copyrighted Video Games, and to distribute the Copyrighted Video Games to the public.”
Plaintiff alleges that “Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiff, has copied the Copyrighted Video Games and distributed the Copyrighted Video Games to the public. In doing so, Defendant has violated Plaintiff’s exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution. Defendants’ actions constitute infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrights and exclusive rights under copyright.” Plaintiff believes that Defendant may have sold other copyrighted video games and reserves the right to add additional copyright causes of action after discovery is conducted. Activision requests statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1), of not more than $ 30,000.00 and not less than $ 750.00 for each copyrighted work and requests the court order the defendant to pay the costs of the lawsuit and reasonable attorneys’ fees pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 505. The case is titled Activision Publishing, Inc. v. Guse, CV08-03756 FMS (C.D. Cal. 2008).