THQ sues Activision Blizzard over box art

by Alexander Sliwinski on Oct 27th 2008 5:15PM

THQ has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard over the trade dress and copyright of an off-road racing game, reports law blog Patent Arcade. THQ alleges that SCORE International Baja 1000: The Official Game, releasing this month, infringes on the trade dress (box art) of its Baja: Edge of Control.

We certainly notice the strong similarities between the two covers, but we're sure the legal rationale for the suit will go beyond saying: "These two cars are in practically the same position on the cover, with a red car in the foreground and a blue one airborne in the background." At least, we hope the legal arguments go beyond that.

PDF - THQ Inc. v. Activision Blizzard, Inc. [Patent Arcade]

Source

Tags: activision-blizzard, baja-1000, baja-edge-of-control, lawsuit, legal, thq

Reader Comments (52)

lol

lol for sure,

and rightly so I reckon. plagiarising motherfuckers.

My thoughts exactly.

Its because they both used the IGN watermark.

No, no it must be the ESRB logo.....

I wish i could vote you higher than 3 hearts shaggy.

Haha that's insane! Did Activision even look at the other Baja game before actually publishing their similar game? Wow... For the first time, I think that a lawsuit for a patent is actually justified lol. Not to mention they don't want customers mixing the two games up. Imagine, Activision went on a big ad campaign, people bought the THQ one lol

yea your right and i think thats the main fear here. THQ is probably worried that uninformed consumers may be confused and accidentally buy the other game instead of theirs considering the name and box art similarities. i say they certainly have a justified cause on this one, especially since i dont really perceive this being a 'huge' seller anyway, they dont want people cutting in on the little bit of money they get from it.

Clearly they looked at it...they're almost identical!

Trademark, not patent.

I can imagine the artist downloading the cover to one game and carefully rendering his own rendition and then presenting it to the execs.

Activision artist: Viola! My creation!
Activision publisher: Great job! You must have spent hours creating this cover. I really like how the red buggy is in the front there with all those lights...and there's that blue truck in the background flying in the air. Looks like an exciting Baja game! Should really stand out from the competition.
Activision artist: Uh huh...

Good ol' Viola!

Oh, wait...you meant "voilà", didn't you?

Carefully rendered? Looks more like he applied a blur filter and handed it back! Rediculous...

Unless of course it was an intentional viola...

The activision publisher's name was Viola.

While Voilà means "That's it" in French, viola means "Raped" =)

Speaking of "rip-offs", doesn't Hammer from Fable II look a lot like Nariko from Heavenly Sword, of course much more buffed up?

And look at the direct Solid Snake rip-off on this boxart!

http://scrawlfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/vampire-rain-boxart.jpg

Those are pure money makers right there! lol

Its prob not even worth the court/lawyer fees to even bother about sue'ing over this pile of crap.

Are you kidding me!? This is such a frivolous lawsuit, I hope the attorney who brought this gets disbarred. I mean, BAJA: Edge of Control has a helicopter and the other one doesn't, for crying out loud.

**beep**sarcasm detector running low on batteries**

Activision meant to put in the chopper, they just forgot. Like the Wii version of Okami, I'm sure a fixed cover will be offered free of charge with a helicopter in the space that's been designated for it at the top left.

I probably would have been "Activision, What the shit?" before suing them.

I think this can easily be solved with a "jinx you owe me a coke"

Hehe, could have been a coincidence. These games are so generic that I would be surprised if the box art DIDN'T look the same.

By coke, you mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meh... probably just an accident. For example, if you have the vehicles from that angle and you want don't want the vehicle in the foreground to cover up the background vehicle then it needs to be higher. The easiest way in an offroad game is to simply have the one in the background jumping. And then the bike is simply thrown in the background as an afterthought to say, "This game has bikes too!".

Take a look at Mortorstorm: Pacific Rift's cover:
http://www.ebgames.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=70789

Buggy in the foreground, jumping truck in the background, and an ATV off to the side. They just did theirs from a different angle.

Is it also an accident that both co-pilots in the red truck are pointing ahead?

I don't know, probably. That's sort of their job... they help navigate. But beyond that, what would be the point of copying a cover in the first place when it wouldn't cost that much to have a new one drawn up? It's not like we're talking about flagship titles here, so I doubt anyone is trying to ride coat tails.

Confirmed: These two covers don't look the same.

Thanks Vidikron

LOL... I didn't say that. I'm just saying I doubt there's any negative intent here.

I down vote you purely because you directed me to an EB games website. Filthy preorder bastards!

DEATH TO GAMESTOP!

No, it was definitely intentional. Look, they even put the ESRB logo in the same corner!

Wait, the Activision one is the official game. They should be suing THQ instead.

We can only hope that they destroy each other

Though both make meaningful contributions

Activision published COD4 , as long as they still have infinity ward , they better survive.

Ugh, people will siphon money for anything.

this happens all the time, sometimes we just don't notice it. it's called a knock-off. what happens is that one person comes out with something, here the original box art, and then the other guys, having seen the box art and thinking it's spot on, hire some one to give them, uh hum "the same but different". and that's what you get. i know, because i'm a graphic artist/designer and that's all people want. take in mind that to them, originality has the chance of failing, while imitating what worked before is a safer bet. bollocks i know...

Activision: Fuck, we can't think of an idea for cover art, huh? Whats this I see right here next to my son's console, Baja? Hmmm, maybe we could use this cover and tweak it just a little, nobody will notice, besides, gamers are stupid, mwahahaha

I'm sure there are huge lines waiting to buy both of these masterpieces. :)

Wow, talk about a blatant rip-off. Who is the marketing genius that is going to lose their job over this?

Aww, they're not the same at all! One's got a motorcycle and the other's......hey wait....oh shit!-there it is....down in the corner! lol lol

They're completely different. Even a blind chimpanzee situated in the center of a cavern with the lights turned off and his friend Ray Charles can tell they're nowhere near the same. The blue truck on the THQ cover has lights on the roof, the Activision one doesn't. Plus, the Activision tires are bigger on the red car. And see the grill protector on the red car? Totally different from the THQ one.

Man, a trained seahorse can tell the difference.

/sarcasm off

Eh, I know a bunch of the guys that made this game, and even they joke about it. "Baja 1000: The game you bought cause you thought you were buying the other game!"

"Baja: Edge of Control" had a much bigger media buy (not huge, but you've actually heard of it) than "Score International" and I'm sure Activision was trying to trade on that marketing.

Motorstorm says hi......and sells about 50 times more than these complete waste of discs.

Wouldn't surprise me if they worked together on this lawsuit just to get publicity.

They should settle this lawsuit with a race.

Up around dead mans curve? Your on buddy!
First one to jump out the car is a chicken.

What am I suppose to be looking at?

You know, THQ will LOSE this lawsuit. The cover may be identical but its a DIFFERENT cover. Some1 over at activision looked at the boxart, and just drew a picture that was similar to it. Its actually a differnt picture, and you cant copyright a generic truck and positioning when drawing a picture. Theres nothing to sue for here.

The resemblance between the two are disturbing to the point that they might even come off as stereoscopic renderings of the same file, only with slightly different textures and minor prop/environment changes. The odds of this occurring completely by accident are unbelievably low.

At this point, Activision could probably counter-sue using the same charges, suggesting some sort of wrong-doing on THQ's part as a means of further devalue their competing product by making it look like a clone of the higher priced title.

This kind of reminds me of various cases where Apple has had to go after MP3 player accessory manufacturers for employing ads/box art that looks remarkably similar to Apple's iTunes ads, on the grounds that they are infringing on Apple's trademark as a means of gaining sales from iPod users, rather than advertising their product as a generic accessory that will work on any device featuring a headphone jack.

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THQ sues Activision Blizzard over box art

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