Capcom plagarised over 200 pieces of artwork?

[You]

A friend sent me this, and wow this looks really bad for Capcom. Stealing various bits of artwork without permission, even as far as textures for the Resident Evil 4 logo...

Apparently, as the lawsuit claims, that after the Capcom leak some of the original source images for the game textures were found, some of them using the same filenames of the images from where they were stolen.

 

Pay up Crapcom!

 

https://www.polygon.com/22519568/resident-evil-4-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-capcom

Edited June 5, 2021 by enaysoft

[MidnightDragon]

That's impressive...and not in a good way. 

[Kristen Danielle]

Holy crap. As a professional artist myself, this makes me mad! When I made graphic art through photo manipulation on deviantART, we were always required to seek permission for anything that wasn't stock and to credit the artist of every single photo or texture we used. The company behind Neopets has also been accused of this kind of art theft.

[Infected Elite]

They'll probably just settle for an undisclosed amount outside of any kind of courtroom. 

 

everybody copies though. 

4 minutes ago, Kristen Danielle said:

Neopets 

thats something i totally forgot existed lol

[Kristen Danielle]

2 minutes ago, Infected Elite said:

thats something i totally forgot existed lol

You might as well forget it again. When Flash died, they absolutely massacred the look of the site. It actually looks like it's for 5 year olds now despite most of their fanbase being adults and you can't interact with hardly anything.

[Infected Elite]

18 minutes ago, Kristen Danielle said:

You might as well forget it again. When Flash died, they absolutely massacred the look of the site. It actually looks like it's for 5 year olds now despite most of their fanbase being adults and you can't interact with hardly anything.

 

is club penguin still a thing too?

i remember Joe Cartoon and Newgrounds, plus stickdeath site. pretty sure they were all flash as well lol... the gerbil dives were amazing 

[Kristen Danielle]

1 minute ago, Infected Elite said:

 

is club penguin still a thing too?

i remember Joe Cartoon and Newgrounds, plus stickdeath site. pretty sure they were all flash as well lol... the gerbil dives were amazing 

I think I remember stickdeath, but I am not familiar with the rest of those.

[NMErickson]

It’s obvious they used her book images because there’s so many samples taken from it and it’s likely they’ll settle it and she’ll get a nice payout. But could Capcom just say you don’t own that brick wall or that pane of glass in the church. We researched it too.

[ExHaseo]

It doesn't look great, but I'll wait to judge until after all the information comes to light. It could be an instance of these photos being sold to Capcom from the publisher of the book, or someone else stealing the work and selling them to Capcom without them knowing anything. There's a number of situations that could be happening.

 

Edit:

I looked up the book, and in the book description it says,

 

"Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information."

 

It gives pretty express permission for people to use everything in the book however they like. I somehow doubt this lawsuit will hold up in court because of this. It seems more like someone trying to make a quick buck off of Capcom.

Edited June 5, 2021 by ExHaseo

[Infected Elite]

33 minutes ago, ExHaseo said:

 

Edit:

I looked up the book, and in the book description it says,

 

"Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information."

 

It gives pretty express permission for people to use everything in the book however they like. I somehow doubt this lawsuit will hold up in court because of this. It seems more like someone trying to make a quick buck off of Capcom.

Nice find. i think this would rest the case if any, in favor of capcom. it seems like a public domain book 

[AJ_-_808]

30 minutes ago, ExHaseo said:

It doesn't look great, but I'll wait to judge until after all the information comes to light. It could be an instance of these photos being sold to Capcom from the publisher of the book, or someone else stealing the work and selling them to Capcom without them knowing anything. There's a number of situations that could be happening.

 

Edit:

I looked up the book, and in the book description it says,

 

"Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information."

 

It gives pretty express permission for people to use everything in the book however they like. I somehow doubt this lawsuit will hold up in court because of this. It seems more like someone trying to make a quick buck off of Capcom.

So... technically, the author of the book didnt create/design the images from scratch.  She just took photos of existing objects that she didnt create and is selling the collaboration.

 

 

She's not a graphics designer that had her work stolen, she's a photographer profiting off other people's work.

 

She wants $12 million and $2500-25000 per photo lol

How does that work?

 

 

[You]

It is interesting that one of her screenshots is taking from some person's youtube Let's Play of Resident Evil 4.

 

I wonder if the youtube channel owner can sue her? I mean, I'm just guessing but, I bet she didn't get permission first. lol

[lucky0ne16]

seems kinda of odd it took this long to figure out

[Xenoblast91]

I'm not really into the lawsuit issues, and I'm speaking from complete ignorance from this standpoint for such copyright issues. But, as a content creator and seeing this type of infringement, wouldn't be another way of taking advantage of this to approach the company and making it more subtle and then offering them the possibility to use your material for further content? 

 

Maybe I'm hugely misleading as I don't get much into, but as what happened between Epic Games and Apple/Google in recent months, and how the gaming company used the material of several performers (which obviously reached them, instead of filing a lawsuit) which helped them to rocket their earnings, wouldn't be this a potential solution too? I wasn't aware of Capcom leak too. I was of Nintendo in the recent years, but I never imagined that the creators of Street Fighter would be this dubious and untruthful. 

[AihaLoveleaf]

1 minute ago, enaysoft said:

I wonder if the youtube channel owner can sue her? I mean, I'm just guessing but, I bet she didn't get permission first. lol

We're going to see the full reach of the American justice system before this is all over.

[Dr_Mayus]

If you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they going to come from?

But seriously I doubt she wants this to go to court and would rather just have a quick payout. We will see what happens but she isn't getting 12 million
 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Dr_Mayus

[TimeLordCrow13y]

1 hour ago, ExHaseo said:

Edit:

I looked up the book, and in the book description it says,

 

"Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information."

 

Hmm...interesting. Maybe in the actual book it specifies that the images are for non-commercial use only? Though one would think that’d be in the description if that were the case...

 

Anyway, saw the title of the thread and was quite sad, b/c I tend to think that Capcom are one of the better video game developers /publishers. But it seems this case might be in a bit of a grey area so far. 

 

Either way, I have a feeling this will be settled out of court for a undisclosed sum. 

 

Also a bit odd that it took her this long to figure out her work was being used. Maybe she’s just not familiar with video games at all. 

[Abby_TheLastofUs]

It's pretty clear Capcom used her photos, even the file names are the same. So to clear up some confusion in this thread.

 

1) She's filing a lawsuit now because the Capcom gigaleak makes it undoubtable that her photos were used. Not only are the images identical but at least one image has the exact same file name. Before the leak, as similar a the images were, Capcom could at least make the case it was all a coincidence but the leak destroys that defense. 

 

2) As the article mentions, her book is copyrighted and people have to contact her to license any images and textures in the CD that came with book that they want to use in commercial work. Capcom didn't. 

 

3) Photography is work, and she's a professional photographer. So this can't be dismissed as someone casually snapping a picture while their out somewhere and expecting to rake in millions. Capcom stole her work, and yes, even if you want to dismiss photography as not work, the law still sides with her.

 

4) She doesn't need permission to use snapshots from Let's Play to reference how her work has been used by Capcom.

 

5) The amount she's asking for is based on damages and profits. She's not asking for 12 million because she thinks the images are worth that much, but because her images were used in a commercial products that made Capcom hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

This stuff probably isn't that rare in the video game industry. Naughty Dog had to replace a painting in Uncharted 4 because it was Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag concept art, and recently, a director accused Capcom of stealing a monster design from a movie he made in 2013. It's just rare for it to be so obvious.

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Abby_TheLastofUs

[Darling Baphomet]

I'm all for the free movement of ideas and so on and so forth, but fuck corporations parasiting off of other people's work like this. They have more than enough money to do things legitimately.

[BrandedBerserk]

4 hours ago, ExHaseo said:

Edit:

I looked up the book, and in the book description it says,

 

"Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information."

 

It gives pretty express permission for people to use everything in the book however they like. I somehow doubt this lawsuit will hold up in court because of this. It seems more like someone trying to make a quick buck off of Capcom.

 

Someone that looks into shit for the full details how rare that is these days.

Edited June 5, 2021 by BrandedBerserk

[Dav9834]

Yup that's extremely cut and dry, Capcom won't even go to court, they know they lost, it'll be settled

 

But why didn't they just license it? It couldn't have been more than what they're going to pay

 

Taking inspiration is one thing, taking the full photograph with no alteration practically, that's just lazy

[DaivRules]

I was hoping my favorite copyright attorney, Leonard French, would cover this case and he did. He actually reads through the complaint and explains it for those of you that are curious about the actual facts in the case, rather than some article authors interpretation.

 

 

[NMErickson]

On 6/8/2021 at 10:53 AM, DaivRules said:

I was hoping my favorite copyright attorney, Leonard French, would cover this case and he did. He actually reads through the complaint and explains it for those of you that are curious about the actual facts in the case, rather than some article authors interpretation.

 

 

That was an interesting watch. Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know that in her lawsuit she wants each and every copy of all games and products that contain her photographs destroyed. Uh oh everyone, hide your Resident Evil games!!