A ruling found that "ROM: Remember of Majesty," a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released by RedLab Games and Kakao Games, did not infringe the copyright of NCSOFT's "Lineage W."
According to legal sources on the 13th, the Civil Agreement Division 62 of the Seoul Central District Court (Presiding Judge Lee Hyun-seok) recently ruled against the plaintiff in a lawsuit in which NCSOFT sought to ban copyright infringement by RedLab Games and Kakao Games.
NCSOFT demanded that "ROM" stop infringing the copyright of "Lineage W" and pay damages, saying it copied the game's concept and content, art, user interface (UI), and directing. Specifically, it argued that ROM copied Lineage W's ▲ transformation and magic doll systems ▲ equipment enhancement system ▲ item collection system ▲ PvP (player-versus-player) system ▲ various visual expression formats and the combination of these components.
Kakao Games and RedLab Games countered that the game components cited by NCSOFT are mere ideas, not specific expressions protected by the Copyright Act, and, even then, were simply borrowed and combined from works released before Lineage W, lacking creativity. They also argued that the components of Lineage W and ROM are not substantially similar.
The court noted that most of Lineage W's components are mere ideas and thus not subject to copyright protection, lack creativity because they simply borrow elements from earlier games, or are not similar to ROM.
It also said that among the elements subject to copyright protection, the grade indicators for the transformation and magic doll systems and the shop NPC designs are similar to ROM, but they do not occupy a large portion of the overall game, making it difficult to find copyright infringement. This determination follows Supreme Court precedent that, in judging copyright infringement, one must consider the quantitative and qualitative weight of the copied expression within the original work as a whole.