Crowdsourced Content In Video Games: How Ownership Issues Almost "Ganked" A Copyright Case

In Blizzard Entertainment v. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Company, a federal court denied a motion for partial summary judgment for alleged copyright infringement involving some of the biggest names in the video game industry. The case — in which Blizzard Entertainment and Valve Software sued mobile game developers uCool and Lilith Games for allegedly infringing the copyrights in the "Defense of the Ancients" series of games (commonly known as "DotA") — demonstrates how important it is for would-be claimants to have their chain of title documents in order, lest they be "ganked" (snuck up on and defeated by an opponent) in the early stages of litigation.

There are also twists to the case: Much of the intellectual property identified in Blizzard's and Valve's complaint was based on content created by players, not by the game publishers themselves. Moreover, the relevant end-user license agreements (EULAs) did not assign the rights in those assets from the players back to