Image via Activision
A California court has ordered the lawyer of Brooks Entertainment, Inc. to pay up to Activision. The main reason? The lawyer didn’t play enough Call of Duty.
After a lawsuit was filed against Activision by Brooks Entertainment and its CEO, Shon Brooks, alleging that Activision violated its trademark of “Shon Brooks” by making Sean Brooks the “main character” of the Call of Duty franchise.
However, the lawyer representing Brooks Entertainment didn’t really seem to know anything about Call of Duty, creating an issue int he court.
Brooks Entertainment filed their claim last November, claiming the games Stock Picker and Save One Bank are similar to Call of Duty because both Shon and Sean Brooks performed similar actions like using missiles and going to Mars. Additionally, Brooks Entertainment, Inc. alleged that the titles all had “scripted game battle scenes take place in a high fashion couture shopping center mall.”
Activision’s legal counsel stated the following as a response back in March:
“After receiving the Complaint […] I played the entire single-player campaign of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [and] it was immediately apparent to me that many (if not virtually all) of the factual allegations in the Complaint were not accurate. It also was immediately apparent that Plaintiff’s counsel could not have played Infinite Warfare (or any Call of Duty game, for that matter) and filed the Complaint in good faith.”
The judge in charge of hearing the case sided with Activision, dismissing the Complaint with prejudice on July 12. Dismissing something with prejudice means that it cannot be filed again.
The funniest part is that Sean Brooks isn’t the main character of Infinite Warfare and doesn’t make an appearance during the shopping mall battle.
Activision motioned for financial compensation under the anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law in California. The law is meant to punish people who file lawsuits that are basically useless or nonsensical and reward financial compensation to the affected party. Brooks Entertainment, Inc. was forced to reimburse Activision for the attorney fees and costs incurred during the whole ordeal.
On to p of that, Activision also filed a motion to sanction the company under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. What this means is that you can’t just make a claim to the Court without any evidence to back it up, especially if the claims seem random or nonsensical. In more legal terms, it means that a lawyer has to certify that “the claims […] are warranted by existing law or by nonfrivolous argument” and “the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation.”
Now, the lawyer representing Brooks Entertainment is being fined big-time for failing to play Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to actually ensure that the claims being made actually made sense.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
