Capcom Wins Zombie Lawsuit
November 21st, 2008, 5:36 am by James Fudge (No Comments)
(+1 rating, 1 votes) 
Capcom dodged a bullet recently when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by MKR group, the producer of George A Romero’s Day of the Dead. The lawsuit alleged that Capcom’s popular game Dead Rising, infringed on Romero’s movie about survivors fending off zombies in an abandoned shopping mall. Judge Richard Seeborg disagreed with MKR, noting that the similarities beyond the setting and the zombies were minuscule. The judge said that the concepts used by both the game and the movie were too vague to be copyrighted.
In my opinion this is a good thing for the game industry because some concepts just cannot be copyrighted and the movie industry would do well to save its money and avoid these kinds of lawsuits altogether. Dead Rising isn’t really about survivors anyway - it’s about what the player does in the few hours he has in the mall. Romero wishes his films had that much thoughtfulness and focus..
Capcom will bring its Wii Dead Rising game to America in Q1 2009, but it doesn’t like like it will be as much fun as the original on which it is based..
Source: GI.biz
Tags: Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising, Lawsuit, Romero
