In 2021, a curious lawsuit broke out in the US state of California. A company is suing Call of Duty for discovering copyright infringement in the Infinite Warfare story campaign. The lawsuit was so far-fetched that the lawyer responsible had to compensate Activision for not playing CoD enough.
Infinite Warfare was the Call of Duty of 2016 and it was set quite far in the future. The story comes up with hair-raising scenes in space and plays with the fear of getting lost in the vastness of space.
Maybe that wasn’t the most original idea when it was released in 2016. But a company from the USA went even further. Brooks Entertainment sued Activision-Blizzard, the group behind Call of Duty, for damages: Ideas were stolen.
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This was the accusation: The plaintiff company and its attorney claimed that Infinite Warfare’s main character, Sean Brooks, was based on Brooks Entertainment’s CEO, Shon Brooks.
In addition, his ideas from two of the company’s mobile games have been used in Infinite Warfare. According to Brooks Entertainment, it owns the rights to the financial mobile games “Save One Bank” and “Stock Picker”.
The lawsuit described a number of situations that it sought to claim copyright infringement.
The plaintiffs described a scripted fight scene that took place in a “high fashion couture” shopping center in which they clearly saw the CEO “Shon Brooks” playing the role of the CoD character “Sean Brooks”. There have been several such comparisons.
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This is how things went: The lawsuit was dismissed by the court. What’s more, Brooks Entertainment’s attorney was instructed to compensate Activision-Blizzard for the unnecessary expense.
In the US, there is an opportunity for the defendant to file a motion to sanction the plaintiff if the lawsuit is unnecessary and based on incidental or false evidence (via Kotaku.com).
If this application goes through, the subject of the proceedings may not be brought before the court again and reimbursement of expenses is also possible.
Why does the lawyer have to pay? The accusation was too far from the truth and it could easily have been checked whether there was any copyright infringement.
The court says plaintiff’s attorney should have played Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare more before filing the baseless lawsuit. Only the first 1.5 hours had to be completed for the exam.
So Sean Brooks is not the main character of the game, but Commander Nick Reyes. Additionally, the character Sean Brooks was not involved in the fight scene at the mall, as the lawsuit alleges.
In addition, Infinite Warfare was described by the plaintiffs as a first- and third-person shooter, although it is a pure first-person shooter.
All in all, the court saw no reason for the lawsuit and even thought it was an unnecessary waste of resources.
Leave us a comment with your opinion on the topic. If you’d rather read more about failed lawsuits against Call of Duty, check out: WWE Legend Sues Call of Duty – Beats himself with his strongest argument