Designer Judy Juracek filed a lawsuit against Capcom and accused the company of using her photos to create textures in their games. We are talking at least about Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry. Yurachek cites more than 200 examples of copying and demands over $10 million from a Japanese publisher.Resident Evil 4
The essence of the claims
This was reported by the Polygon publication with reference to a court document that contains more than 100 pages with examples of illegal use of works.
Yurachek filed a lawsuit in a Connecticut court on June 4.
The designer claims that all the images are taken from her 1996 book Surfaces. It contains 1200 author’s photographs, which are intended for artists, architects and designers. The book was accompanied by a CD, the materials from which could be used for commercial purposes only under license. According to Yurachek, Capcom never contacted her to acquire the rights to the photos.
She discovered that the Japanese company had taken at least 80 photos directly from her book. The images were used to create textures in Devil May Cry (2001), Resident Evil 4 (2005) and a number of other Capcom games.
Now Yurachek demands damages from the publisher in the amount of up to $ 12 million, as well as from $2.5 to $25 thousand for each illegally used photo. Capcom itself stated in the Polygon comment that it was notified of the lawsuit, but is not ready to talk about it yet.
Basic evidenceOne of the most striking examples of copying is the glass texture used to create the logo for Resident Evil 4. Yurachek claims that he personally took this photo in Italy, and Capcom could not accidentally recreate this texture with precision to the smallest detail.
In the accompanying document, the designer gives over 200 examples of using photographs from her book. We are talking about the textures of interiors, doors, sculptural elements and other surfaces.
In addition, Yurachek uses materials from a major Capcom leak that occurred last November. In the internal documents of the company, one of the textures of the metal surface from Resident Evil is called “ME009” — the same name has an identical photo on the disk that was attached to the designer’s book.
The same texture ME009According to her, the leak also mentions that Capcom paid for the use of works by other designers from the United States and Japan.
Yurachek comes to the conclusion that for some reason the company deliberately used her work without permission.
In the lawsuit, the designer also recalls that recently the director of the film “Frankenstein’s Army” accused Capcom of plagiarism. According to him, the company copied the design of several monsters from his painting for Resident Evil Village.