23.Jan.2015
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Game developer received warning for Backbone game with smurf characters
On January 1st, Mikael 'Hipoonios' Persson did release his game Smurf Rescue created with Backbone under a Freeware licence. Five days ago he received an e-Mail from the law office Gevers, which in behalf of the rightholder of the smurfs named Studio Peyo requested to immediately shut down the website and to pay 500 Euro of lawyer’s fees. A three days deadline was set. Otherwise further steps will be taken.
According to Persson he does not check his e-mails on regular basis. Therefore he got the claim - sent to the mail account specified as contact address for the domain hipooniosamigasite.org - after the expiration of the deadline. Meanwhile he also received a letter which included a claim of 2000 Euro. Persson has published screenshots of parts of his e-mail traffic as well as of the admission of guilt which he is supposed to sign:
Persson's version of the details is extremely fragmentary. Currently it is not possible to reconstruct the complete communication between him and the law office Gevers. If his version of the details will be confirmed, at least according to German law the questionable warning may be legally skilful - although it suggests that the law office might use warnings as business model.
Because recently several Amiga games have been offered or announced which use Intellectual Property of big media companies ("Danger Mouse", "Evil Minions"), the developers as a precaution should reconsider it - there is not any kind of legal protection for non-commercial products. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Jan. 2015, 21:46] [Comments: 0]
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