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Midway Cleared Of Psi-Ops Copyright Infringement

By Chris Bennett, Tudor Carsten, Michael R. Coburn, Sarah Dale-Harris, Pablo Guzman, Danielle (Dani) Lemon, Chris Metcalfe and David Spratley

Midway has been declared the winner in a copyright infringement action brought by William Crawford, a California screenwriter, over Midway's game "Psi-Ops: the Mindgate Conspiracy". Crawford claimed that the game borrowed heavily from his script for a movie called "Psi-Ops' and sought $25M in damages.

According to Crawford both of the works shared similar plot devices, characters and (obviously) naming. However, the federal court judge held that the similarities were not "protectable" under the Copyright Act and that "no reasonable juror' would find that that the two works were "substantially similar in the expression of their ideas.'

Coverage is available at kotaku.com and 1up.com.

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Full post as published by Video Game Law Blog on December 09, 2008 (boomark / email).