We Hardly Knew Ye: PUBG Drops Lawsuit Against Epic Over Fortnite Similarities

We Hardly Knew Ye: PUBG Drops Lawsuit Against Epic Over Fortnite Similarities

6 years ago
Anonymous $cyhBy-qkd5

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180627/09381440116/we-hardly-knew-ye-pubg-drops-lawsuit-against-epic-over-fortnite-similarities.shtml

About a month ago we learned that PUBG Corp., the company behind the game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, had sued Epic Games, makers of Fortnite, earlier this year in South Korea. This whole dust up between the two game developers has been monumentally frustrating, specifically due to the folks at PUBG being confused as to whether video games get any IP protection (they do!) and, then, whether fairly generic game modes and game genres are afforded copyright protection (they're not!).

The problem for PUBG in all of this is that its game mode of a battle royale pitting a hundred players against each other is simply not something that fits into copyright law's protection. As we've explained, there is an idea/expression dichotomy in many country's copyright laws, in which the specific expression is afforded copyright but mere ideas are not. For example, the art assets for PUBG absolutely are copyrightable, while the concept of a battle royale is not. Due to that, PUBG's lawsuit was always going to face a steep uphill climb to come out in its favor.